New approaches are needed that could move us towards developing effective systems for problem solving and decision making, systems that can deal with complex and ill-structured situations, systems that can function in information rich environments, systems that can cope with imprecise information, systems that can rely on their knowledge and learn from experience - i.e. intelligent systems. One of the main efforts in intelligent systems development is focused on knowledge and information management which is regarded as the crucial issue in smart decision making support. The 13 Chapters of this book represent a sample of such effort. The overall aim of this book is to provide guidelines to develop tools for smart processing of knowledge and information. Still, the guide does not presume to give ultimate answers. Rather, it poses ideas and case studies to explore and the complexities and challenges of modern knowledge management issues. It also encourages its reader to become aware of the multifaceted interdisciplinary character of such issues. The premise of this book is that its reader will leave it with a heightened ability to think - in different ways - about developing, evaluating, and supporting intelligent knowledge and information management systems in real life based environment.
