Moreover, given the ever increasing number of machine learning models being developed, model selection is becoming increasingly important.

As machine learning systems become increasingly integrated into high-stakes decision-making processes, ensuring fairness in algorithmic outcomes has become a critical concern. Methods to mitigate bias typically fall into three categories: pre-processing, in-processing, and post-processing. While significant attention has been devoted to the latter two, pre-processing methods, which operate at the data level and offer advantages such as model-agnosticism and improved privacy compliance, have received comparatively less focus and lack standardised evaluation tools. In this work, we introduce FairPrep, an extensible and modular benchmarking framework designed to evaluate fairness-aware pre-processing techniques on tabular datasets. Built on the AIF360 platform, FairPrep allows seamless integration of datasets, fairness interventions, and predictive models. It features a batch-processing interface that enables efficient experimentation and automatic reporting of fairness and utility metrics. By offering standardised pipelines and supporting reproducible evaluations, FairPrep fills a critical gap in the fairness benchmarking landscape and provides a practical foundation for advancing data-level fairness research.

Sensitive data captured by Industrial Control Systems (ICS) play a large role in the safety and integrity of many critical infrastructures. Detection of anomalous or malicious data, or Anomaly Detection (AD), with machine learning is one of many vital components of cyberphysical security. Quantum kernel-based machine learning methods have shown promise in identifying complex anomalous behavior by leveraging the highly expressive and efficient feature spaces of quantum computing. This study focuses on the parameterization of Quantum Hybrid Support Vector Machines (QSVMs) using three popular datasets from Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). The results demonstrate that QSVMs outperform traditional classical kernel methods, achieving 13.3% higher F1 scores. Additionally, this research investigates noise using simulations based on real IBMQ hardware, revealing a maximum error of only 0.98% in the QSVM kernels. This error results in an average reduction of 1.57% in classification metrics. Furthermore, the study found that QSVMs show a 91.023% improvement in kernel-target alignment compared to classical methods, indicating a potential "quantum advantage" in anomaly detection for critical infrastructures. This effort suggests that QSVMs can provide a substantial advantage in anomaly detection for ICS, ultimately enhancing the security and integrity of critical infrastructures.

This work tackles 3D scene reconstruction for a video fly-over perspective problem in the maritime domain, with a specific emphasis on geometrically and visually sound reconstructions. This will allow for downstream tasks such as segmentation, navigation, and localization. To our knowledge, there is no dataset available in this domain. As such, we propose a novel maritime 3D scene reconstruction benchmarking dataset, named as MTReD (Maritime Three-Dimensional Reconstruction Dataset). The MTReD comprises 19 fly-over videos curated from the Internet containing ships, islands, and coastlines. As the task is aimed towards geometrical consistency and visual completeness, the dataset uses two metrics: (1) Reprojection error; and (2) Perception based metrics. We find that existing perception-based metrics, such as Learned Perceptual Image Patch Similarity (LPIPS), do not appropriately measure the completeness of a reconstructed image. Thus, we propose a novel semantic similarity metric utilizing DINOv2 features coined DiFPS (DinoV2 Features Perception Similarity). We perform initial evaluation on two baselines: (1) Structured from Motion (SfM) through Colmap; and (2) the recent state-of-the-art MASt3R model. We find that the reconstructed scenes by MASt3R have higher reprojection errors, but superior perception based metric scores. To this end, some pre-processing methods are explored, and we find a pre-processing method which improves both the reprojection error and perception-based score. We envisage our proposed MTReD to stimulate further research in these directions. The dataset and all the code will be made available in https://github.com/RuiYiYong/MTReD.

Training machine learning models for fair decisions faces two key challenges: The \emph{fairness-accuracy trade-off} results from enforcing fairness which weakens its predictive performance in contrast to an unconstrained model. The incompatibility of different fairness metrics poses another trade-off -- also known as the \emph{impossibility theorem}. Recent work identifies the bias within the observed data as a possible root cause and shows that fairness and predictive performance are in fact in accord when predictive performance is measured on unbiased data. We offer a causal explanation for these findings using the framework of the FiND (fictitious and normatively desired) world, a "fair" world, where protected attributes have no causal effects on the target variable. We show theoretically that (i) classical fairness metrics deemed to be incompatible are naturally satisfied in the FiND world, while (ii) fairness aligns with high predictive performance. We extend our analysis by suggesting how one can benefit from these theoretical insights in practice, using causal pre-processing methods that approximate the FiND world. Additionally, we propose a method for evaluating the approximation of the FiND world via pre-processing in practical use cases where we do not have access to the FiND world. In simulations and empirical studies, we demonstrate that these pre-processing methods are successful in approximating the FiND world and resolve both trade-offs. Our results provide actionable solutions for practitioners to achieve fairness and high predictive performance simultaneously.

Data used by automated decision-making systems, such as Machine Learning models, often reflects discriminatory behavior that occurred in the past. These biases in the training data are sometimes related to label noise, such as in COMPAS, where more African-American offenders are wrongly labeled as having a higher risk of recidivism when compared to their White counterparts. Models trained on such biased data may perpetuate or even aggravate the biases with respect to sensitive information, such as gender, race, or age. However, while multiple label noise correction approaches are available in the literature, these focus on model performance exclusively. In this work, we propose Fair-OBNC, a label noise correction method with fairness considerations, to produce training datasets with measurable demographic parity. The presented method adapts Ordering-Based Noise Correction, with an adjusted criterion of ordering, based both on the margin of error of an ensemble, and the potential increase in the observed demographic parity of the dataset. We evaluate Fair-OBNC against other different pre-processing techniques, under different scenarios of controlled label noise. Our results show that the proposed method is the overall better alternative within the pool of label correction methods, being capable of attaining better reconstructions of the original labels. Models trained in the corrected data have an increase, on average, of 150% in demographic parity, when compared to models trained in data with noisy labels, across the considered levels of label noise.

Social media, particularly Twitter, has seen a significant increase in incidents like trolling and hate speech. Thus, identifying hate speech is the need of the hour. This paper introduces a computational framework to curb the hate content on the web. Specifically, this study presents an exhaustive study of pre-processing approaches by studying the impact of changing the sequence of text pre-processing operations for the identification of hate content. The best-performing pre-processing sequence, when implemented with popular classification approaches like Support Vector Machine, Random Forest, Decision Tree, Logistic Regression and K-Neighbor provides a considerable boost in performance. Additionally, the best pre-processing sequence is used in conjunction with different ensemble methods, such as bagging, boosting and stacking to improve the performance further. Three publicly available benchmark datasets (WZ-LS, DT, and FOUNTA), were used to evaluate the proposed approach for hate speech identification. The proposed approach achieves a maximum accuracy of 95.14% highlighting the effectiveness of the unique pre-processing approach along with an ensemble classifier.

Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP) is a potentially blinding eye disorder because of damage to the eye's retina which can affect babies born prematurely. Screening of ROP is essential for early detection and treatment. This is a laborious and manual process which requires trained physician performing dilated ophthalmological examination which can be subjective resulting in lower diagnosis success for clinically significant disease. Automated diagnostic methods can assist ophthalmologists increase diagnosis accuracy using deep learning. Several research groups have highlighted various approaches. Captured ROP Retcam images suffer from poor quality. This paper proposes the use of improved novel fundus preprocessing methods using pretrained transfer learning frameworks to create hybrid models to give higher diagnosis accuracy. Once trained and validated, the evaluations showed that these novel methods in comparison to traditional imaging processing contribute to better and in many aspects higher accuracy in classifying Plus disease, Stages of ROP and Zones in comparison to peer papers.

Almost 50 years after the invention of SQL, injection attacks are still top-tier vulnerabilities of today's ICT systems. Consequently, SQLi detection is still an active area of research, where the most recent works incorporate machine learning techniques into the proposed solutions. In this work, we highlight the shortcomings of the previous ML-based results focusing on four aspects: the evaluation methods, the optimization of the model parameters, the distribution of utilized datasets, and the feature selection. Since no single work explored all of these aspects satisfactorily, we fill this gap and provide an in-depth and comprehensive empirical analysis. Moreover, we cross-validate the trained models by using data from other distributions. This aspect of ML models (trained for SQLi detection) was never studied. Yet, the sensitivity of the model's performance to this is crucial for any real-life deployment.

The economics of smaller budgets and larger case numbers necessitates the use of AI in legal proceedings. We examine the concept of disparate impact and how biases in the training data lead to the search for fairer AI. This paper seeks to begin the discourse on what such an implementation would actually look like with a criticism of pre-processing methods in a legal context . We outline how pre-processing is used to correct biased data and then examine the legal implications of effectively changing cases in order to achieve a fairer outcome including the black box problem and the slow encroachment on legal precedent. Finally we present recommendations on how to avoid the pitfalls of pre-processed data with methods that either modify the classifier or correct the output in the final step.