It is our great pleasure to welcome you all to the 2002 AFSS International Conference on Fuzzy Systems (AFSS 2002) to be held in Calcutta, the great City of Joy. AFSS 2002 is the ?fth conference in the series initiated by the Asian Fuzzy Systems Society (AFSS). AFSS 2002 is jointly being organized by theIndianStatisticalInstitute(ISI)andJadavpurUniversity(JU). Likeprevious conferencesinthisseries, wearesure, AFSS2002willprovideaforumforfruitful interaction and exchange of ideas between the participants from all over the globe. The present conference covers all major facets of soft computing...