Chengdu , also known as "Rong City"," Paradise Place", is the capital of Sichuan Province , one of the historical and cultural cities in China , a city full of exotic atmosphere, a city of glittering and translucence. The 1st International Conference on Advanced Data Mining and Applications (ADMA 2005) was successfully held in Wuhan , China , and the proceedings were published by Springer in LNAI 3584. The 2 nd International Conference on Advanced Data Mining and Applications (ADMA 2006) was held in Xi'An , China , and the proceedings were also published by Springer in LNAI 4093. The 3 rd ADMA 2007 was sponsored by Harbin Institute of Technology. A growing attention has been paid to the study, development and application of data mining. As a result there is an urgent need for sophisticated techniques and tools that can handle new fields of data mining, e.g. spatial data mining in the context of spatial-temporal characteristics, streaming data mining, and biomedical data mining. Our knowledge on data mining should also have to be expanded to new applications. The 4 th International Conference on Advanced Data Mining and Applications (ADMA2008) aims at bringing together the experts on data mining in the world, and provides a leading international forum for the dissemination of original research results in data mining, spanning applications, algorithms, software and systems, and different applied disciplines with potential in data mining.