Abstract
The application of feature engineering in classification problems has been commonly used as a means to increase the classification algorithms performance. There are already many methods for constructing features, based on the combination of attributes but, to the best of our knowledge, none of these methods takes into account a particular characteristic found in many problems: causality. In many observational data sets, causal relationships can be found between the variables, meaning that it is possible to extract those relations from the data and use them to create new features. The main goal of this paper is to propose a framework for the creation of new supposed causal probabilistic features, that encode the inferred causal relationships between the target and the other variables. In this case, an improvement in the performance was achieved when applied to the Random Forest algorithm.

Abstract

Abstract
Classic feature selection techniques remove irrelevant or redundant features to achieve a subset of relevant features in compact models that are easier to interpret and so improve knowledge extraction. Most such techniques operate on the whole dataset, but are unable to provide the user with useful information when only instance-level information is required; in other words, classic feature selection algorithms do not identify the most relevant information in a sample. We have developed a novel feature selection method, called saliency-based feature selection (SFS), based on deep-learning saliency techniques. Our algorithm works under any architecture that is trained by using gradient descent techniques (Neural Networks, SVMs, ...), and can be used for classification or regression problems. Experimental results show our algorithm is robust, as it allows to transfer the feature ranking result between different architectures, achieving remarkable results. The versatility of our algorithm has been also demonstrated, as it can work either in big data environments as well as with small datasets.

Abstract
Massive data broadcast by GPS-equipped vehicles provide unprecedented opportunities. One of the main tasks in order to optimize our transportation networks is to build data-driven real-time decision support systems. However, the dynamic environments where the networks operate disallow the traditional assumptions required to put in practice many off-the-shelf supervised learning algorithms, such as finite training sets or stationary distributions. In this paper, we propose BRIGHT: a drift-aware supervised learning framework to predict demand quantities. BRIGHT aims to provide accurate predictions for short-term horizons through a creative ensemble of time series analysis methods that handles distinct types of concept drift. By selecting neighborhoods dynamically, BRIGHT reduces the likelihood of overfitting. By ensuring diversity among the base learners, BRIGHT ensures a high reduction of variance while keeping bias stable. Experiments were conducted using three large-scale heterogeneous real-world transportation networks in Porto (Portugal), Shanghai (China), and Stockholm (Sweden), as well as with controlled experiments using synthetic data where multiple distinct drifts were artificially induced. The obtained results illustrate the advantages of BRIGHT in relation to state-of-the-art methods for this task.

Abstract
Email Marketing is one of the most important traffic sources in Digital Marketing. It yields a high return on investment for the company and offers a cheap and fast way to reach existent or potential clients. Getting the recipients to open the email is the first step for a successful campaign. Thus, it is important to understand how marketers can improve the open rate of a marketing campaign. In this work, we analyze what are the main factors driving the open rate of financial email marketing campaigns. For that purpose, we develop a classification algorithm that can accurately predict if a campaign will be labeled as Successful or Failure. A campaign is classified as Successful if it has an open rate higher than the average, otherwise it is labeled as Failure. To achieve this, we have employed and evaluated three different classifiers. Our results showed that it is possible to predict the performance of a campaign with approximately 82% accuracy, by using the Random Forest algorithm and the redundant filter selection technique. With this model, marketers will have the chance to sooner correct potential problems in a campaign that could highly impact its revenue. Additionally, a text analysis of the subject line and preheader was performed to discover which keywords and keyword combinations trigger a higher open rate. The results obtained were then validated in a real setting through A/B testing.

Abstract
This paper analyses the impact of trust and reputation modelling on CloudAnchor, a business-to-business brokerage platform for the transaction of single and federated resources on behalf of Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SME). In CloudAnchor, businesses act as providers or consumers of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) resources. The platform adopts a multi-layered multi-agent architecture, where providers, consumers and virtual providers, representing provider coalitions, engage in trust & reputation-based provider look-up, invitation, acceptance and resource negotiations. The goal of this work is to assess the relevance of the distributed trust model and centralised fuzzified reputation service in the number of resources successfully transacted, the global turnover, brokerage fees, losses, expenses and time response. The results show that trust and reputation based brokerage has a positive impact on the CloudAnchor performance by reducing losses and the execution time for the provision of both single and federated resources and increasing considerably the number of federated resources provided.