Integrating fuzzy knowledge by genetic algorithms

In this paper, we propose a genetic-algorithm-based fuzzy-knowledge integration framework that can simultaneously integrate multiple fuzzy rule sets and their membership function sets. The proposed approach consists of two phases: fuzzy knowledge encoding and fuzzy knowledge integration. In the encoding phase, each fuzzy rule set with its associated membership functions is first transformed into an intermediary representation and then further encoded as a string. The combined strings form an initial knowledge population, which is then ready for integration. In the knowledge-integration phase, a genetic algorithm is used to generate an optimal or nearly optimal set of fuzzy rules and membership functions from the initial knowledge population. Two application domains, the hepatitis diagnosis and the sugarcane breeding prediction, were used to show the performance of the proposed knowledge-integration approach. Results show that the fuzzy knowledge base derived using our approach performs better than every individual knowledge base.