Fuzzy approaches to environmental decisions: application to air quality

This paper considers flexible approaches to decisions designed to improve environmental quality having regard to uncertainty. The performance of simple and complex models, for forecasting air quality are reviewed, and both types are shown to involve considerable uncertainty regarded as typical of environmental systems. This means that decisions usually depend on combining two or more quite uncertain environmental criteria, and it is shown that this can be approached systematically if a fuzzy logic framework is adopted. Fuzzy set aggregation includes, as special cases, other decision-making frameworks, such as multi-criteria analysis and conventional probability based methods. Examples are presented of how it can be applied to situations involving models and used to incorporate broader factors involving risk, and socio-economic considerations.