Environmental risk and territorial compatibility: A soft computing approach

Abstract

The presence of risky establishments in urban areas is one of the most dangerous factor that the environmental planners have to consider to the end of a safe, compatible development of these part of the cities. The discrimination between acceptable and not acceptable risk is a central problem of this field. Particularly, in regard to the territorial risk analysis, the Italian law prescribes a methodology based on strict quantitative thresholds in order to separate acceptable risk from unacceptable one. This method might introduce some problems for those cases connected to the safety limit. The proximity depends on both the vulnerability indicator of the target, and on the distance from the limit of the damage-area. In both the cases, the fuzzy logic approach offers a good solution to the delicate question "how safe the target is?" by introducing a smoothing degree of compatibility rather than the use of rigid and pre-defined thresholds. By using fuzzy thresholds for each variable, we can compute a soft measure of compatibility between the target and the risk source. We underline the compensatory properties of this approach which improves the system currently in use. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003.