Soil moisture Fuzzy Estimation Approach based on Decision-Making

This paper presents a Fuzzy Estimation Approach based on Decision Making (FEADM) to estimate point soil moisture, in order to develop a regional soil moisture estimate. This keeps the advantages of an automatic irrigation system but avoiding their operational complexity. In the FEADM 's first stage, the Fuzzy Analytical Process weigh five fuzzified environmental inputs used as assessment criteria. These criteria are used by a selective assessment stage, where only the relevant criteria for each alternative are assessed. As result, the best assessments of each alternative and the best assessed alternative are obtained. In the second stage, an output membership function is assigned to every alternative for its forward aggregation and defuzzification. This process reaches a soil moisture estimate. Unlike other models, FEADM allows estimating a quantitative value from a decision making process. Furthermore, its computational cost is lower than conventional fuzzy estimation models due to the selective assessment.