Special issue on granular soft computing for pattern recognition and mining

This issue introduces the state-of-art in granular soft computng for pattern recognition and mining and presents some novel ontributions. Granulation is a computing paradigm, among othrs such as self-reproduction, self-organization, functioning of rain, Darwinian evolution, group behavior, cell membranes, and orphogenesis that are abstracted from natural phenomena. Granlation is inherent in human thinking and reasoning processes. ranular computing (GrC) provides an information processing ramework, where computation and operations are performed on nformation granules (clumps of similar objects or points), and it is ased on the realization that precision is sometimes expensive and ot very meaningful in modeling and controlling complex systems. he structure of granulation can often be defined using methods ased on rough sets, fuzzy sets or their combination. In this conortium, rough sets and fuzzy sets work synergistically, often with ther soft computing approaches, and use the principle of granular omputing. Depending on the nature of computing and granules, risp or fuzzy, one may have granular fuzzy computing or fuzzy ranular computing. The objective of the special issue on ”Granular oft Computing for Pattern Recognition and Mining” is to provide much needed overview of this interdisciplinary research area s it enters maturity, hosting novel research contributions which i) augment the current tools, models and languages by means of ranular soft computing techniques (ii) provide facilities for repreenting uncertain knowledge and for reasoning in the presence of ncertainty, and (iii) are potentially applied to pattern recognition nd data mining tasks. The special issue would provide a repository o help academics, practitioners, post-graduates and policy makrs, working in the area of granular soft computing to disseminate nformation and to learn from each other’s work. Twenty-four submissions from all over the world were received. fter a rigorous review process, only five articles spanning a segent of the research in granular soft computing and its applications ere selected for publication in this issue. Apart from these five rticles, a title paper authored by the guest editors introduces the ranular information processing aspects of natural computing. The rticle provides an overview of the significance of natural computng with respect to the granulation-based information processing odels, such as neural networks, fuzzy sets and rough sets, and heir hybridization. The article emphasizes the biological motivaion, design principles, application areas, open research problems nd challenging issues of these models. A brief description of the five contributions are stated below n the order they appear in the issue. The article ”Granular Comuting Neural-Fuzzy Modelling: A Neutrosophic Approach” by A.R. olis and G. Panoutsos models a neuro-fuzzy system based on a