Overview
F-IND is a software tool which allows the user to easily develop quality indices using the power of Fuzzy Logic to define the index properties.
F-IND has been developed to make it easy the generation of indices in the ecological application domain, such as water quality indexes. However, F-IND implements a general approach based on Fuzzy Logic. Therefore it can be used in any application domain where the definition of a quality index is required.
The use of a methodology based on Fuzzy Logic presents several advantages:
- it allows to use information that other methods cannot include, such as individual knowledge and experience;
- it allows to deal with uncertainty, which is often studied with techniques based on probability;
- it allows to combine quantitative and qualitative data;
- it allows to cope with the system complexity;
- it is a mathematical formalism that translates expert judgement expressed in linguistic terms into precise numbers, so the laws of fuzziness are scientifically sound;
- it allows to avoid artificial precision and to produce results that are more similar to the real world.
Applications
The F-IND framework has been successfulyl applied to implement a fuzzy 'boater' model to detect fouling and spreading risk of non-indigenous species by recreational boats. Configuration files containing the description of fuzzy variables and membership functions can be downloaded here.
Additional information
F-IND has been developed with the joint efforts of people working at the Robotics Laboratory of the Department of Computer Engineering and Systems Science and the Ecology Section of the Department of Land Ecology at the University of Pavia (Italy)