University

From 1997 till 2004, I have worked as a teaching assistant and doctoral researcher at the department of Information Technology, Ghent University.

Ph.D. Abstract

When trying to model the human perception of environmental noise annoyance, several problems arise that are related to fuzzy, uncertain or lacking data and vaguely known relations between variables. Therefore in this work, the concept of noise annoyance has been considered as an inherent fuzzy concept from the very beginning. This fuzziness and uncertainty is modeled with fuzzy set theory (and related theories), which allows to deal with this kind of information in a very natural and straightforward way. The framework allows to take the inherent fuzziness into account in the representation of noise annoyance as well as in the reasoning processes and the interpretation of the model results.

First, a conceptual model for noise annoyance from a particular source (e.g. road and railway noise) has been studied and implemented as a fuzzy rule based system. This allows experts in the field to formulate their knowledge in almost natural language statements. No knowledge extraction algorithms have been used because the aim is to build a stable model not biased towards a specific data set. Secondly, the accumulation of perceptions of noise annoyance from several sources into a single annoyance expression has been studied. The best known strongest component model is a black box model and therefore theoretically very weak. A cognitive process for this model has been formulated as a set of rules which have also been fuzzified. The accumulation problem has also been approached from the viewpoint of multi-criteria decision making. In this context several non-linear aggregation operators, such as fuzzy integrals, have been adopted to model the accumulation of perceptions.

All models have been tested with data from two social surveys, one conducted in Austria and one from Flanders, Belgium. Results show a better prediction performance than the classical, binary logic based, models. A clear advantage is also their interpretability and their tolerance for fuzzy and uncertain data and knowledge.

Pictures of the Public Defense

Members of the Exam Committee

Ph.D. Advisors

Prof.Dr.Ir. Dick Botteldooren

Prof.Dr. Rita De Caluwe

Members of the Reading Committee

Prof.Dr. Peter Lercher

Prof.Dr. Bernard De Baets

Dr. Guy De Tré

Members of the Exam Committee

Prof.Dr.Ir. Jan Van Campenhout
Chair

Prof.Dr.Ir. Herman Tromp
Secretary

Prof.Dr.Ir. Mario Pickavet

Publications

Publications in international journals listed in the Science Citation Index

• D. Botteldooren, A. Verkeyn, C. Cornelis, M. De Cock, On the meaning of noise annoyance modifiers: a fuzzy set theoretical approach, Acta Acustica united with Acustica, 88 (2), 2002, pp. 239-251, ISSN: 1436-7947
• D. Botteldooren, A. Verkeyn, Fuzzy models for accumulation of reported community noise annoyance from combined sources, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 112 (4), 2002, pp. 1496-1508, ISSN: 0001-4966
• A. Verkeyn, D. Botteldooren, B. De Baets, G. De Tre, Sugeno integrals for the Modelling of Noise Annoyance Aggregation, Fuzzy Sets and Systems: State-of-the-art anno 2003, T. Bilgic, B. De Baets, O. Kaynak (eds), Lecture notes in computer science - Lecture notes in Artificial Intelligence 2715, Springer-Verlag, 2003, pp. 277-284, ISBN 3-540-40383-3
• D. Botteldooren, A. Verkeyn, P. Lercher, A Fuzzy Rule Based Framework for Noise Annoyance Modelling, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 114 (3), 2003, pp. 1487-1498
• A. Verkeyn, D. Botteldooren, B. De Baets, Genetic learning of fuzzy integrals accumulating human reported environmental stress, Applied Soft Computing 11 (1), 2011, pp 305-314

Publications in other international journals

• D. Botteldooren, A. Verkeyn, P. Lercher, Noise annoyance modeling using fuzzy rule based systems, Journal of Noise and Health, 15 (4), 2002, pp. 1463-1741, ISSN: 1463-1741
  This paper also appeared as:
  D. Botteldooren, A. Verkeyn, P. Lercher, Noise annoyance modeling using fuzzy rule based systems, In: Noise pollution and Health, D. Prasher (eds), Noise Research Network Publications, London, 2003, ISBN: 1-901747-02-6

Publications in edited volumes

• A. Verkeyn, D. Botteldooren, Annoyance prediction with fuzzy rule bases, In: Computational Intelligent Systems for Applied Research, D. Ruan, P. D'hondt, E. Kerre (eds.), World Scientific Publishers 2002, pp. 411-418, ISBN: 981-238-066-3
• A. Verkeyn, D. Botteldooren, M. De Cock, E.E. Kerre, Generating membership functions for a noise annoyance model from experimental data, In: Studies in Fuzziness and Soft computing: Soft computing in measurement and information acquisition (vol. 127), L. Reznik, V. Kreinovich (eds), Springer-Verlag, 2003, pp. 51-67, ISBN: 3-540-00246-4
• D. Botteldooren, A. Verkeyn, P. Lercher, Noise annoyance modeling using fuzzy rule based systems, In: Noise pollution and Health, D. Prasher (eds), Noise Research Network Publications, London, 2003, pp. 13-39, ISBN: 1-901747-02-6
  This paper also appeared as:
  D. Botteldooren, A. Verkeyn, P. Lercher, Noise annoyance modeling using fuzzy rule based systems, Journal of Noise and Health, 15 (4), 2002, pp. 27-44, ISSN: 1463-1741
• T. De Muer, A. Verkeyn, D. Botteldooren, Noise annoyance mapping, In: Spatio Temporal Databases: Flexible Querying and Reasoning, R. De Caluwe, G. De Tre, G. Bordogna (eds), Springer-Verlag, 2004, pp. 369-392, ISBN: 3-540-22214-6 

Publications in proceedings of international conferences

• D. Botteldooren, A. Verkeyn, Using approximate reasoning techniques to model noise annoyance, Proceedings of the 28th International Congress on Noise Control Engineering (Internoise) 1999, Florida, USA, Dec. 1999, 3, pp. 1351-1356 (ed. Joseph Cuschieri, Stewart Glegg, and Yan Young, ISBN 0-9622072-3-3).
• D. Botteldooren, A. Verkeyn, P. Lercher, Extracting linguistic rules to model community traffic noise annoyance, Proceedings of the 29th International Congress on Noise Control Engineering (Internoise) 2000, Nice, France, Aug. 2000, 4, pp. 2302-2307 (published by Société Française d'Acoustique (S.F.A.), ed. Didier Cassereau, ISBN: 2-9515619-3-8)
• A. Verkeyn, A fuzzy approach to the modeling of traffic noise annoyance, Proceedings of the First Ph.D. Symposium at the Faculty of Engineering (Ghent University), Ghent, Belgium, Dec. 2000, 2 pages (on CD-ROM, Paper 5)
• D. Botteldooren, A. Verkeyn, P. Lercher, What can classical and fuzzy concepts contribute to the analysis of masking effects in environmental noise surveys?, Proceedings Conference on Noise Control Engineering (Noise Con) 2000, California, USA, Dec. 2000, 6 pages (on CD-ROM)
• A. Verkeyn, D. Botteldooren, G. De Tre, R. De Caluwe, Fuzzy modeling of traffic noise annoyance, Proceedings of the joint 9th IFSA World Congress and the 20th NAFIPS International Conference, Vancouver, Canada, Jul. 2001, pp. 1176-1181 (also on CD-ROM)
• G. De Tre, R. De Caluwe, A. Verkeyn, The application of level-2 fuzzy sets in fuzzy and uncertain data modeling, Proceedings of the joint 9th IFSA World Congress and the 20th NAFIPS International Conference, Vancouver, Canada, Jul. 2001, pp. 2329-2334 (also on CD-ROM)
• D. Botteldooren, A. Verkeyn, P. Lercher, How can classical analysis and fuzzy modeling help us find out how road noise modifies people's reaction to railway noise?, Proceedings of the 30th International Congress on Noise Control Engineering (Internoise) 2001, The Hague, Netherlands, Aug. 2001, 6 pages (on CD-ROM, Paper 591)
• D. Botteldooren, A. Verkeyn, P. Lercher, How can we distinguish exposure and expectation effects in integrated soundscape analyses?, Proceedings of the 17th International Congress on Acoustics (ICA) 2001, Rome, Italy, Sep. 2001, 2 pages (on CD-ROM, Soundscape session)
• D. Botteldooren, A. Verkeyn, An iterative fuzzy model for cognitive processes involved in environment quality judgement, Proceedings of the IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI) 2002, Honolulu, Hawaii, May 2002, pp. 1057-1062 (and CD-ROM, Paper 4116)
• A. Verkeyn, D. Botteldooren, Towards language independent models based on survey data, Proceedings of the IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI) 2002, Honolulu, Hawaii, May 2002, pp. 1063-1068 (and CD-ROM, Paper 4117)
• D. Botteldooren, A. Verkeyn, Aggregation of specific noise annoyance to a general noise annoyance rating: a fuzzy model, Proceedings of the 9th International Congress on Sound and Vibration (ICSV), Orlando, Florida, USA, Jul. 2002, 8 pages (on CD-ROM)
• A. Verkeyn, D. Botteldooren, The effect of land-use variables in a fuzzy rule based model for noise annoyance, Proceedings of the 31th International Congress on Noise Control Engineering (Internoise) 2002, Dearborn, Michigan, USA, Aug. 2002, 6 pages (on CD-ROM, Paper 371)
• G. De Tre, A. Hallez, J. Verstraete, A. Verkeyn, Beyond conjunctive aggregation of possibilistic truth values in database systems, Proceedings of Eurofuse Workshop on Information Systems, Villa Monastero, Varenna, Italy, Sep. 2002, pp. 137-142
• A. Verkeyn, D. Botteldooren, B. De Baets, G. De Tre, Modeling annoyance aggregation with Choquet integrals, Proceedings of Eurofuse Workshop on Information Systems, Villa Monastero, Varenna, Italy, Sep. 2002, pp. 259-264
• D. Botteldooren, P. Lercher, A. Verkeyn, Noise annoyance and coping: A soft analysis, Proceedings of 8th International Congress on Noise as a Public Health problem (ICBEN), Rotterdam, The Netherlands, Jun. 2003, pp. 288-289
• A. Verkeyn, Fuzzy modeling of noise annoyance, Proceedings of 1st Flanders Engineering Ph.D. Symposium, Brussels, Belgium, Dec. 2003, 2 pages (on CD-ROM)
• A. Verkeyn, D. Botteldooren, Fuzzy translation tool for linguistic terms, Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems, Budapest, Hungary, Jul. 2004, 6 pages (on CD-ROM)
• A. Verkeyn, D. Botteldooren, Fuzzy performance measures for noise annoyance models, Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Intelligent System Design and Applications, Budapest, Hungary, Aug. 2004, pp. 607-612 (and CD-ROM)
• D. Botteldooren, A. Verkeyn, B. De Baets, P. Lercher, Fuzzy integrals as a tool for obtaining an indicator for quality of life, Proceedings of the IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI), 2006, Vancouver, Canada, Jul. 2006, ISBN: 0-7803-9488-7 pp. 1065-1071, or ISBN: 0-7803-9489-5 pp. 5985-5991
• A. Verkeyn, V. Pison, F. Deboeck, N. Vanderpijpen, Calculating Maximum Available Capacity at Interconnection Points of the Belgian Natural Gas Network with Simone and Cassis, Proceedings of the 12th SIMONE Congress, 2014, Cascais, Portugal, Oct. 2014, 7 pages (on CD-ROM)

Conferences

• Internoise 1999, 29th International Congress and Exposition on Noise Control Engineering, Florida (U.S.A.), 6-8 December 1999
• EUFIT 1999, 7th European Conference on Intelligent Techniques and Soft Computing, Aachen (Germany), 14-16 September 1999
• ABAV Meeting, Association Belge/Belgische Akoestiek Vereniging, Luik (Belgium; Sart-Tilman, kasteel van Colonster), 25 May 2000
• CoIL 2000, The European Best Pratice Workshops and Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Learning, Chios (Greece), 19-23 June 2000
• Internoise 2000, the 29th International Congress on Noise Control Engineering, Nice (France), 27-30 August 2000
• IFEST 2000, Flanders Expo, Gent (Belgium), 24-27 October 2000 (together with the whole acoustics group)
• NoiseCon 2000, National Conference on Noise Control Engineering, Newport Beach (California), 3-5 December 2000
• Ph.D. Symposium of the Faculty of Engineering, Ghent University, Gent (Belgium), 5 December 2000
• NOPHER 2001, An international symposium on Noise Pollution and Health (NOPHER: Noise Pollution and Health Effects Reduction), Cambridge (U.K.), 6-8 April, 2001
• IFSA/NAFIPS 2001, "Fuzziness and soft computing in the new millennium", 9th IFSA (International Fuzzy Sets Association) World Congress together with the 20th NAFIPS (North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society) International Conference, Vancouver (Canada), 25-28 July, 2001
• Internoise 2001, 30th International Congress and Exposition on Noise Control Engineering, The Hague (The Netherlands), 27-30 August 2001
• ICA 2001, 17th International Congress on Acoustics, Rome (Italy), 2-7 September 2001
• 2nd Ph.D. Symposium of the Faculty of Engineering, Ghent University, Gent (Belgium), 12 December 2001
• WCCI 2002, World Congress on Computational Intelligence, Honolulu (Hawaii), 12-17 May 2002
  Joint FUZZ-IEEE (IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems), CEC (Congress on Evolutionary Computation) and IJCNN  (International Joint Conference on Neural Networks)
• NAFIPS 2002, 21th NAFIPS (North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society) International Conference, Tulane University, New Orleans (USA), 27-29 June 2002
• ICSV 2002, 9th International Congress on Sound and Vibration, Orlando, Florida (USA), 8-11 July 2002
• Internoise 2002, 31st International Congress and Exposition on Noise Control Engineering, Dearborn, Michigan (USA), 19-21 August 2002
• FLINS 2002, 5th International Fuzzy Logic Intelligent technologies in Nuclear Science (FLINS) Conference on Computational Intelligent Systems for Applied Research, Het Pand, Ghent (Belgium), 16-18 September 2002
• Eurofuse 2002, Eurofuse Workshop on Information Systems, Villa Monastero, Varenna (Italy), 23-25 September 2002
• 3th Ph.D. Symposium of the Faculty of Engineering, RUG-FTW, Gent (Belgium), 11 December 2002
• FUZZ-IEEE 2003, IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems, Marriott Pavilion Downtown Hotel, St. Louis (USA), 25-28 May 2003
• NoiseCon 2003, 19th Conference on Noise Control Engineering, Cleveland, Ohio (USA), 23-25 June 2003
• IFSA 2003, 10th IFSA (International Fuzzy Sets Association) World Congress, Istanbul (Turkey), 29 June-2 July 2003
• ICBEN 2003, 8th International Congress on Noise as a Public Health problem, Rotterdam (The Netherlands), 29 June-3 July 2003
• ICSV 2003, 10th International Congress on Sound and Vibration, Stockholm (Sweden), 7-10 July 2003
• NAFIPS 2003, 22th NAFIPS (North American Fuzzy Information Processing Society) International Conference, Chicago (USA), 24-26 July 2003
• Internoise 2003, 32nd International Congress and Exposition on Noise Control Engineering, Jeju Island (Korea), 25-28 August 2003
• FEPHDS 2003, 1st Flanders Engineering Ph.D. Symposium, Diamond Building, A. Reyerslaan 80, Brussels (Belgium), 11 December 2003
• ICA 2004, 18th International Congress on Acoustics, Kyoto (Japan), 4-9 April 2004
• FUZZ-IEEE 2004, IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems, Budapest (Hungary), 25-29 July 2004
• Internoise 2004, 33rd International Congress and Exposition on Noise Control Engineering, Prague (Czech), 22-25 August 2004
• ISDA 2004, 4th International Conference on Intelligent System Design and Applications, Budapest (Hungary), 26-29 August 2004
• FLINS 2004, 6th International Fuzzy Logic Intelligent technologies in Nuclear Science (FLINS) Conference on Computational Intelligent Systems for Applied Research, Blankenberge (Belgium), 1-3 September 2004
• Eurofuse 2004, Eurofuse Workshop on Data and Knowledge engineering, Warszawa (Poland) 22-25 September  2004
• SIMONE 2014, 12th International SIMONE Congress, Cascais (Portugal), 8-10 October 2014