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Book A Bayesian Least Squares Support Vector Machines Based Framework for Fault Diagnosis and Failure Prognosis

Download or read book A Bayesian Least Squares Support Vector Machines Based Framework for Fault Diagnosis and Failure Prognosis written by Taimoor Saleem Khawaja and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A high-belief low-overhead Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) system is desired for online real-time monitoring of complex non-linear systems operating in a complex (possibly non-Gaussian) noise environment. This thesis presents a Bayesian Least Squares Support Vector Machine (LS-SVM) based framework for fault diagnosis and failure prognosis in nonlinear, non-Gaussian systems. The methodology assumes the availability of real-time process measurements, definition of a set of fault indicators, and the existence of empirical knowledge (or historical data) to characterize both nominal and abnormal operating conditions. An efficient yet powerful Least Squares Support Vector Machine (LS-SVM) algorithm, set within a Bayesian Inference framework, not only allows for the development of real-time algorithms for diagnosis and prognosis but also provides a solid theoretical framework to address key concepts related to classication for diagnosis and regression modeling for prognosis. SVM machines are founded on the principle of Structural Risk Minimization (SRM) which tends to nd a good trade-o between low empirical risk and small capacity. The key features in SVM are the use of non-linear kernels, the absence of local minima, the sparseness of the solution and the capacity control obtained by optimizing the margin. The Bayesian Inference framework linked with LS-SVMs allows a probabilistic interpretation of the results for diagnosis and prognosis. Additional levels of inference provide the much coveted features of adaptability and tunability of the modeling parameters. The two main modules considered in this research are fault diagnosis and failure prognosis. With the goal of designing an efficient and reliable fault diagnosis scheme, a novel Anomaly Detector is suggested based on the LS-SVM machines. The proposed scheme uses only baseline data to construct a 1-class LS-SVM machine which, when presented with online data, is able to distinguish between normal behavior and any abnormal or novel data during real-time operation. The results of the scheme are interpreted as a posterior probability of health (1 - probability of fault). As shown through two case studies in Chapter 3, the scheme is well suited for diagnosing imminent faults in dynamical non-linear systems. Finally, the failure prognosis scheme is based on an incremental weighted Bayesian LS-SVR machine. It is particularly suited for online deployment given the incremental nature of the algorithm and the quick optimization problem solved in the LS-SVR algorithm. By way of kernelization and a Gaussian Mixture Modeling (GMM) scheme, the algorithm can estimate (possibly) non-Gaussian posterior distributions for complex non-linear systems. An efficient regression scheme associated with the more rigorous core algorithm allows for long-term predictions, fault growth estimation with confidence bounds and remaining useful life (RUL) estimation after a fault is detected. The leading contributions of this thesis are (a) the development of a novel Bayesian Anomaly Detector for efficient and reliable Fault Detection and Identification (FDI) based on Least Squares Support Vector Machines, (b) the development of a data-driven real-time architecture for long-term Failure Prognosis using Least Squares Support Vector Machines, (c) Uncertainty representation and management using Bayesian Inference for posterior distribution estimation and hyper-parameter tuning, and finally (d) the statistical characterization of the performance of diagnosis and prognosis algorithms in order to relate the efficiency and reliability of the proposed schemes.

Book Least Squares Support Vector Machines

Download or read book Least Squares Support Vector Machines written by Johan A K Suykens and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2002-11-12 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on Least Squares Support Vector Machines (LS-SVMs) which are reformulations to standard SVMs. LS-SVMs are closely related to regularization networks and Gaussian processes but additionally emphasize and exploit primal-dual interpretations from optimization theory. The authors explain the natural links between LS-SVM classifiers and kernel Fisher discriminant analysis. Bayesian inference of LS-SVM models is discussed, together with methods for imposing sparseness and employing robust statistics.The framework is further extended towards unsupervised learning by considering PCA analysis and its kernel version as a one-class modelling problem. This leads to new primal-dual support vector machine formulations for kernel PCA and kernel CCA analysis. Furthermore, LS-SVM formulations are given for recurrent networks and control. In general, support vector machines may pose heavy computational challenges for large data sets. For this purpose, a method of fixed size LS-SVM is proposed where the estimation is done in the primal space in relation to a Nyström sampling with active selection of support vectors. The methods are illustrated with several examples.

Book Knowledge Driven Board Level Functional Fault Diagnosis

Download or read book Knowledge Driven Board Level Functional Fault Diagnosis written by Fangming Ye and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-08-19 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a comprehensive set of characterization, prediction, optimization, evaluation, and evolution techniques for a diagnosis system for fault isolation in large electronic systems. Readers with a background in electronics design or system engineering can use this book as a reference to derive insightful knowledge from data analysis and use this knowledge as guidance for designing reasoning-based diagnosis systems. Moreover, readers with a background in statistics or data analytics can use this book as a practical case study for adapting data mining and machine learning techniques to electronic system design and diagnosis. This book identifies the key challenges in reasoning-based, board-level diagnosis system design and presents the solutions and corresponding results that have emerged from leading-edge research in this domain. It covers topics ranging from highly accurate fault isolation, adaptive fault isolation, diagnosis-system robustness assessment, to system performance analysis and evaluation, knowledge discovery and knowledge transfer. With its emphasis on the above topics, the book provides an in-depth and broad view of reasoning-based fault diagnosis system design. • Explains and applies optimized techniques from the machine-learning domain to solve the fault diagnosis problem in the realm of electronic system design and manufacturing;• Demonstrates techniques based on industrial data and feedback from an actual manufacturing line;• Discusses practical problems, including diagnosis accuracy, diagnosis time cost, evaluation of diagnosis system, handling of missing syndromes in diagnosis, and need for fast diagnosis-system development.

Book A Dynamic Bayesian Network Framework for Data Driven Fault Diagnosis and Prognosis of Smart Building Systems

Download or read book A Dynamic Bayesian Network Framework for Data Driven Fault Diagnosis and Prognosis of Smart Building Systems written by Ojas Man Singh Pradhan and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Buildings are subject to faults in their heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems that can lead to excessive energy wastage, poor indoor climate, equipment failures and high maintenance costs. Field studies have shown that employing fault detection, diagnosis and prognosis (FDDP) tools followed up with equipment services and corrections can help achieve up to 40% of energy savings within the HVAC system and improve indoor climate, increase equipment lifecycle and reduce maintenance costs. The increasing adoption of building automation systems (BAS), Internet of Things (IoT) and other smart technologies in recent years have allowed large amounts of data to be continuously collected from building systems. This data-rich environment, along with the surge in data analytics and machine learning tools, has made cost-effective data-driven FDDP strategies possible. Compared to purely physics-based methods, data-driven methods require less explicit knowledge of the underlying physical system, thus are often easier to develop, and can learn certain intricate relationships that exist among data. Within the reported data-driven FDDP methods, there exists a few research gaps: 1) data imputation methods that leverage mutual information from correlated measurements to defy poor data quality from BAS have not been utilized efficiently; 2) there lacks a systematic and scalable fault diagnosis framework that incorporates probabilistic temporal relationships to track fault evolution; 3) existing fault diagnosis strategies typically focus on traditional rule-based control strategies and their scalability for advanced control strategies such as Guideline 36 have not been explored yet; 4) active threats information such as cyber-attacks, are typically not incorporated in an FDDP framework; 5) fault prognosis strategies to preemptively identify gradual faults for predictive maintenance have rarely been studied. This research attempts to address the above-mentioned research gaps through the following: Data Imputation: reported data imputation methods that are suitable for handling and repairing multi-source BAS data are evaluated. Data collected from a medium-sized, mixed-use institution building situated in Stockholm, Sweden and a small commercial building simulated in a laboratory setup is used to evaluate five different data imputation methods. Results demonstrate that incorporating time-lagged cross-correlations within the k-Nearest Neighbor (kNN) method helps to significantly improve the imputation accuracy and minimize the impact of repaired data on data-driven algorithms. Dynamic Bayesian Network (DBN)-based Framework for Cyber-Physical Fault Diagnosis: a DBN framework with discretized conditional probabilities parameters to represent the temporal relationships among building measurements is developed. Both domain knowledge and machine learning methods are used to develop the DBN structure and parameter model. The developed framework is evaluated for both traditional rule-based and Guideline 36 controls using datasets from a real building, a laboratory building, and a virtual testbed. Results show that the developed DBN framework is effective in diagnosing and isolating faults in systems even with different control strategies. The framework also successfully distinguishes whether system abnormalities originate from cyber-attacks or naturally occurring physical faults. Potential future direction to improve fault isolation using modified DBN topological structure is also reported in this study. DBN-based Framework for Fault Prognosis: an extension of the DBN framework in conjunction with Robust Multivariate Temporal (RMT) variate selection is proposed for fault prognosis. The RMT variate selection is used to extract localized temporal features from high dimensional datasets to determine the best inputs for training forecasting models. The expected fault-free behavior of multiple target variates, selected using domain knowledge, is forecasted using incoming data. The prediction errors generated from the forecasting phase are used as evidences in the DBN inference to estimate future fault probabilities. Gradual faults simulated in the virtual testbed are used to evaluate the prognosis framework. Results show that the developed framework is effective in prognosing gradual faults by leveraging the trending growth on the prediction errors. The research presented in this thesis contributes to the overall objective of developing a robust and cost-effective DBN-based framework for fault diagnosis and prognosis of building HVAC systems. Potential solutions to other existing challenges of implementing data-driven FDDP strategies, such as obtaining high-quality datasets, handling and repairing missing data, establishing a baseline model for detecting abnormalities despite other disturbances such as weather and internal conditions changes, and extracting temporal features from timeseries data are also examined.

Book A Particle Filtering based Framework for On line Fault Diagnosis and Failure Prognosis

Download or read book A Particle Filtering based Framework for On line Fault Diagnosis and Failure Prognosis written by Marcos Eduardo Orchard and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 123 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis presents an on-line particle-filtering-based framework for fault diagnosis and failure prognosis in nonlinear, non-Gaussian systems. The methodology assumes the definition of a set of fault indicators, which are appropriate for monitoring purposes, the availability of real-time process measurements, and the existence of empirical knowledge (or historical data) to characterize both nominal and abnormal operating conditions. The incorporation of particle-filtering (PF) techniques in the proposed scheme not only allows for the implementation of real time algorithms, but also provides a solid theoretical framework to handle the problem of fault detection and isolation (FDI), fault identification, and failure prognosis. Founded on the concept of sequential importance sampling (SIS) and Bayesian theory, PF approximates the conditional state probability distribution by a swarm of points called particles and a set of weights representing discrete probability masses. Particles can be easily generated and recursively updated in real time, given a nonlinear process dynamic model and a measurement model that relates the states of the system with the observed fault indicators.

Book Fault Detection  Diagnosis and Prognosis

Download or read book Fault Detection Diagnosis and Prognosis written by Fausto Pedro García Márquez and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2020-02-05 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents the main concepts, state of the art, advances, and case studies of fault detection, diagnosis, and prognosis. This topic is a critical variable in industry to reach and maintain competitiveness. Therefore, proper management of the corrective, predictive, and preventive politics in any industry is required. This book complements other subdisciplines such as economics, finance, marketing, decision and risk analysis, engineering, etc. The book presents real case studies in multiple disciplines. It considers the main topics using prognostic and subdiscipline techniques. It is essential to link these topics with the areas of finance, scheduling, resources, downtime, etc. to increase productivity, profitability, maintainability, reliability, safety, and availability, and reduce costs and downtime. Advances in mathematics, modeling, computational techniques, dynamic analysis, etc. are employed analytically. Computational techniques, dynamic analysis, probabilistic methods, and mathematical optimization techniques are expertly blended to support the analysis of prognostic problems with defined constraints and requirements. The book is intended for graduate students and professionals in industrial engineering, business administration, industrial organization, operations management, applied microeconomics, and the decisions sciences, either studying maintenance or needing to solve large, specific, and complex maintenance management problems as part of their jobs. The work will also be of interest to researches from academia.

Book Bayesian Networks In Fault Diagnosis  Practice And Application

Download or read book Bayesian Networks In Fault Diagnosis Practice And Application written by Baoping Cai and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2018-08-24 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fault diagnosis is useful for technicians to detect, isolate, identify faults, and troubleshoot. Bayesian network (BN) is a probabilistic graphical model that effectively deals with various uncertainty problems. This model is increasingly utilized in fault diagnosis.This unique compendium presents bibliographical review on the use of BNs in fault diagnosis in the last decades with focus on engineering systems. Subsequently, eleven important issues in BN-based fault diagnosis methodology, such as BN structure modeling, BN parameter modeling, BN inference, fault identification, validation, and verification are discussed in various cases.Researchers, professionals, academics and graduate students will better understand the theory and application, and benefit those who are keen to develop real BN-based fault diagnosis system.

Book Process Control System Fault Diagnosis

Download or read book Process Control System Fault Diagnosis written by Ruben Gonzalez and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-07-21 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Process Control System Fault Diagnosis: A Bayesian Approach Ruben T. Gonzalez, University of Alberta, Canada Fei Qi, Suncor Energy Inc., Canada Biao Huang, University of Alberta, Canada Data-driven Inferential Solutions for Control System Fault Diagnosis A typical modern process system consists of hundreds or even thousands of control loops, which are overwhelming for plant personnel to monitor. The main objectives of this book are to establish a new framework for control system fault diagnosis, to synthesize observations of different monitors with a prior knowledge, and to pinpoint possible abnormal sources on the basis of Bayesian theory. Process Control System Fault Diagnosis: A Bayesian Approach consolidates results developed by the authors, along with the fundamentals, and presents them in a systematic way. The book provides a comprehensive coverage of various Bayesian methods for control system fault diagnosis, along with a detailed tutorial. The book is useful for graduate students and researchers as a monograph and as a reference for state-of-the-art techniques in control system performance monitoring and fault diagnosis. Since several self-contained practical examples are included in the book, it also provides a place for practicing engineers to look for solutions to their daily monitoring and diagnosis problems. Key features: • A comprehensive coverage of Bayesian Inference for control system fault diagnosis. • Theory and applications are self-contained. • Provides detailed algorithms and sample Matlab codes. • Theory is illustrated through benchmark simulation examples, pilot-scale experiments and industrial application. Process Control System Fault Diagnosis: A Bayesian Approach is a comprehensive guide for graduate students, practicing engineers, and researchers who are interests in applying theory to practice.

Book Least Squares Support Vector Machines

Download or read book Least Squares Support Vector Machines written by and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annotation Focuses on the Least Squares Support Vector Machines (LS-SVMs) which are reformulations to standard SVMs. The authors explain the natural links between LS-SVM classifiers and kernel Fisher discriminant analysis. Bayesian inference of LS-SVM models is discussed, together with methods for imposing sparseness and employing robust statistics.

Book Model Based Fault Diagnosis and Prognosis of Class of Linear and Nonlinear Distributed Parameter Systems Modeled by Partial Differential Equations

Download or read book Model Based Fault Diagnosis and Prognosis of Class of Linear and Nonlinear Distributed Parameter Systems Modeled by Partial Differential Equations written by Jia Cai and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "With the rapid development of modern control systems, a significant number of industrial systems may suffer from component failures. An accurate yet faster fault prognosis and resilience can improve system availability and reduce unscheduled downtime. Therefore, in this dissertation, model-based prognosis and resilience control schemes have been developed for online prediction and accommodation of faults for distributed parameter systems (DPS). First, a novel fault detection, estimation and prediction framework is introduced utilizing a novel observer for a class of linear DPS with bounded disturbance by modeling the DPS as a set of partial differential equations. To relax the state measurability in DPS, filters are introduced to redesign the detection observer. Upon detecting a fault, an adaptive term is activated to estimate the multiplicative fault and a tuning law is derived to tune the fault parameter magnitude. Then based on this estimated fault parameter together with its failure limit, time-to-failure (TTF) is derived for prognosis. A novel fault accommodation scheme is developed to handle actuator and sensor faults with boundary measurements. Next, a fault isolation scheme is presented to differentiate actuator, sensor and state faults with a limited number of measurements for a class of linear and nonlinear DPS. Subsequently, actuator and sensor fault detection and prediction for a class of nonlinear DPS are considered with bounded disturbance by using a Luenberger observer. Finally, a novel resilient control scheme is proposed for nonlinear DPS once an actuator fault is detected by using an additional boundary measurement. In all the above methods, Lyapunov analysis is utilized to show the boundedness of the closed-loop signals during fault detection, prediction and resilience under mild assumptions"--Abstract, page iv.

Book Introduction of Intelligent Machine Fault Diagnosis and Prognosis

Download or read book Introduction of Intelligent Machine Fault Diagnosis and Prognosis written by O-Suk Yang and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Condition monitoring, fault diagnosis and prognosis of machinery have received considerable attention in recent years and they are increasingly becoming important in industry because of the need to increase reliability and decrease possible loss of production due to the fault of equipments. Early fault detection, diagnosis and prognosis can increase equipment availability and performance, reduce consequential damage, prolong machine life and reduce spare parts inventories and break down maintenance. With the development of the artificial intelligence techniques, many intelligent systems have been employed to assist the maintenance management task to correctly interpret the fault data. The book is very easy to study; even if the reader is a beginner in the fault diagnosis area, they do not need special prerequisite knowledge to understand the contents of this book. The book is equipped with software under MATLAB and offers many examples which are related to fault diagnosis processes. It will be very useful to readers who want to study feature-based intelligent machine fault diagnosis and prognosis techniques. The book is dedicated to graduate students of mechanical and electrical engineering, computer science and for practising engineers.

Book Diagnostics and Prognostics of Engineering Systems  Methods and Techniques

Download or read book Diagnostics and Prognostics of Engineering Systems Methods and Techniques written by Kadry, Seifedine and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2012-09-30 with total page 461 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Industrial Prognostics predicts an industrial system’s lifespan using probability measurements to determine the way a machine operates. Prognostics are essential in determining being able to predict and stop failures before they occur. Therefore the development of dependable prognostic procedures for engineering systems is important to increase the system’s performance and reliability. Diagnostics and Prognostics of Engineering Systems: Methods and Techniques provides widespread coverage and discussions on the methods and techniques of diagnosis and prognosis systems. Including practical examples to display the method’s effectiveness in real-world applications as well as the latest trends and research, this reference source aims to introduce fundamental theory and practice for system diagnosis and prognosis.

Book Model Based Fault Diagnosis and Prognosis of Nonlinear Systems

Download or read book Model Based Fault Diagnosis and Prognosis of Nonlinear Systems written by Hasan Ferdowsi and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 151 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Rapid technological advances have led to more and more complex industrial systems with significantly higher risk of failures. Therefore, in this dissertation, a model-based fault diagnosis and prognosis framework has been developed for fast and reliable detection of faults and prediction of failures in nonlinear systems. In the first paper, a unified model-based fault diagnosis scheme capable of detecting both additive system faults and multiplicative actuator faults, as well as approximating the fault dynamics, performing fault type determination and time-to-failure determination, is designed. Stability of the observer and online approximator is guaranteed via an adaptive update law. Since outliers can degrade the performance of fault diagnostics, the second paper introduces an online neural network (NN) based outlier identification and removal scheme which is then combined with a fault detection scheme to enhance its performance. Outliers are detected based on the estimation error and a novel tuning law prevents the NN weights from being affected by outliers. In the third paper, in contrast to papers I and II, fault diagnosis of large-scale interconnected systems is investigated. A decentralized fault prognosis scheme is developed for such systems by using a network of local fault detectors (LFD) where each LFD only requires the local measurements. The online approximators in each LFD learn the unknown interconnection functions and the fault dynamics. Derivation of robust detection thresholds and detectability conditions are also included. The fourth paper extends the decentralized fault detection from paper III and develops an accommodation scheme for nonlinear continuous-time systems. By using both detection and accommodation online approximators, the control inputs are adjusted in order to minimize the fault effects. Finally in the fifth paper, the model-based fault diagnosis of distributed parameter systems (DPS) with parabolic PDE representation in continuous-time is discussed where a PDE-based observer is designed to perform fault detection as well as estimating the unavailable system states. An adaptive online approximator is incorporated in the observer to identify unknown fault parameters. Adaptive update law guarantees the convergence of estimations and allows determination of remaining useful life"--Abstract, page iv.

Book Engineering Asset Management 2016

Download or read book Engineering Asset Management 2016 written by Ming J. Zuo and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These proceedings gather selected peer-reviewed papers from the 11th World Congress on Engineering Asset Management (WCEAM), which was held in Jiuzhaigou, China, on 25–28 July, 2016. These proceedings cover a wide range of topics in engineering asset management, including: · strategic asset management; · condition monitoring and diagnostics; · integrated intelligent maintenance; · sensors and devices; · information quality and management; · sustainability in asset management; · asset performance and knowledge management; · data mining and AI techni ques in asset management; · engineering standards; and · education in engineering asset management. The breadth and depth of these state-of-the-art, comprehensive proceedings make them an excellent resource for asset management practitioners, researchers and academics, as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students.

Book Rotor Systems

    Book Details:
  • Author : Rajiv Tiwari
  • Publisher : CRC Press
  • Release : 2017-11-22
  • ISBN : 1351863630
  • Pages : 1225 pages

Download or read book Rotor Systems written by Rajiv Tiwari and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2017-11-22 with total page 1225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The purpose of this book is to give a basic understanding of rotor dynamics phenomena with the help of simple rotor models and subsequently, the modern analysis methods for real life rotor systems. This background will be helpful in the identification of rotor-bearing system parameters and its use in futuristic model-based condition monitoring and, fault diagnostics and prognostics. The book starts with introductory material for finite element methods and moves to linear and non-linear vibrations, continuous systems, vibration measurement techniques, signal processing and error analysis, general identification techniques in engineering systems, and MATLAB analysis of simple rotors. Key Features: • Covers both transfer matrix methods (TMM) and finite element methods (FEM) • Discusses transverse and torsional vibrations • Includes worked examples with simplicity of mathematical background and a modern numerical method approach • Explores the concepts of instability analysis and dynamic balancing • Provides a basic understanding of rotor dynamics phenomena with the help of simple rotor models including modern analysis methods for real life rotor systems.

Book Support Vector Machines

    Book Details:
  • Author : Ingo Steinwart
  • Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
  • Release : 2008-09-15
  • ISBN : 0387772421
  • Pages : 611 pages

Download or read book Support Vector Machines written by Ingo Steinwart and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-09-15 with total page 611 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every mathematical discipline goes through three periods of development: the naive, the formal, and the critical. David Hilbert The goal of this book is to explain the principles that made support vector machines (SVMs) a successful modeling and prediction tool for a variety of applications. We try to achieve this by presenting the basic ideas of SVMs together with the latest developments and current research questions in a uni?ed style. In a nutshell, we identify at least three reasons for the success of SVMs: their ability to learn well with only a very small number of free parameters, their robustness against several types of model violations and outliers, and last but not least their computational e?ciency compared with several other methods. Although there are several roots and precursors of SVMs, these methods gained particular momentum during the last 15 years since Vapnik (1995, 1998) published his well-known textbooks on statistical learning theory with aspecialemphasisonsupportvectormachines. Sincethen,the?eldofmachine learninghaswitnessedintenseactivityinthestudyofSVMs,whichhasspread moreandmoretootherdisciplinessuchasstatisticsandmathematics. Thusit seems fair to say that several communities are currently working on support vector machines and on related kernel-based methods. Although there are many interactions between these communities, we think that there is still roomforadditionalfruitfulinteractionandwouldbegladifthistextbookwere found helpful in stimulating further research. Many of the results presented in this book have previously been scattered in the journal literature or are still under review. As a consequence, these results have been accessible only to a relativelysmallnumberofspecialists,sometimesprobablyonlytopeoplefrom one community but not the others.