Quantifying Environmental Impact Assessments Using Fuzzy Logic

Abstract

1. The first objective is to document how environmental impact as- sessments have been conducted and to explain when and why contention develops. The book stresses that environmental assess- ments (whether of impacts or of existing conditions) are subjective expressions of societal, group, and individual values and opinions. As such, they are not objective or measurable. Science, particularly ecology and environmental science, has difficulties dealing with feelings, beliefs, and values, which are “nonscientific” concepts. 2. The second objective is to justify the use of fuzzy sets, fuzzy logic and approximate reasoning to provide decision-makers with the ability to make well-informed decisions: ones that are technically sound and legally defensible. I do this by describing core issues of an environmental impact assessment in terms of fuzzy modeling and other computational intelligence techniques. 3. The third objective is to illustrate the use of computational intelli- gence techniques presented in objective 2 for environmental impact assessment. This example creates an approximate reasoning model applied to a project completed the traditional way under Wash- ington state laws and regulations. While the example is based on a real industrial development proposal, the original environmen- tal impact assessment was not developed with computational in- telligence techniques. Therefore, the example has been adapted to demonstrate the application of these tools by adding missing in- formation and deleting some components to make the example a reasonable size