LAUSR

Case adaptation is crucial for case-based reasoning (CBR) because the solutions of old cases are not always the ideal answer for the encountered new problem. It is employed to solve new problems by utilizing the adaptation knowledge extracted from similar ones encountered in the past. The traditional adaptation method solves a new problem in the principle of k-nearest neighbor ( $k$ -NN), and the adaptation model was built based on $k$ similar cases. Yet, the $k$ similar cases retrieved by new case may locate in different case clusters in the case base composed of multiple case clusters. This article presents a new case adaptation method by the combination of multi-adaptation engines from different case clusters to improve the adaptation accuracy. First, the input and output of the cluster-based adaptation engine are established from the old cases to distill the adaptation knowledge in each case cluster. Then, the multivariable CBR adaptation engine based on multiple-output support vector regression (MSVR) is built for case adaptation. Furthermore, inspired by the fact that the training sample which contains two closet cases can provide more useful information than others, and reduce the impact of outliers, this study adds the hybrid weight into MSVR, and allocates high weights to the information provided by such high sample density and similarity samples during multi-dimensional regression estimation. Finally, the solution of the target case is gathered by incorporating the output of different adaptation engines. The proposed method was applied to the equipment maintenance cost prediction and compared with traditional statistical-based and machine learning-based methods. Empirical comparison results indicated that the proposed adaptation method could achieve the best performance by utilizing the adaptation knowledge in different clusters under multi-case clusters environment.