The papers collected in this book are concerned with the application of the so-called "soft-computing" techniques to the aim of defining flexible systems. The topics covered witness the actual research trend towards an integration of distinct formal techniques for defining flexible systems. The contributions in this volume mainly concern the definition of systems in several application fields, such as image processing, control, asset allocation, medicine, time series forecasting, qualitative modeling, support to design, reliability analysis, diagnosis, filtering, data analysis, land mines detection and so forth. The papers presented in this volume are organized into three main thematic sections: Fuzzy Systems, Neural Networks and Genetic and Evolutionary Algorithms, although, as outlined before, some works employ more than one technique from these fields.
