Some possibilities for construction of linguistic variables for sustainable development decision-making

Abstract

The fuzzy logic is found to be useful tool for sustainable development (SD) decision making because they could express uncertainty, either in informational and in the decision-making environment. The general linguistic definition, acceptability for environment (air, water, nature, risk, etc.), as well other aspects of sustainable development (health, management issues, etc) is proved to be useful in approximate reasoning and decision-making. According to this definition, the various fuzzy functions of environmental acceptability could be constructed. The foundation for such construction is the concept of special kinds of fuzzy functions generally defined as linguistic variables (LV), which are suitable for mapping to fuzzy sets. As domain for such functions, various SD indicators could be used, expressed either in their physical values (e.g. production, emissions, risk of accidents) or in measures of preferences (MP). The most important MP are mentioned: stated preferences economic evaluation of environment (SPT), economic instruments of environmental protection mostly based on revealed preference techniques (RPT), preferences scales (ordinal, cardinal) according to various methods of their construction, etc. Also, possibility theory (analogous to probability) could be exploited in such construction. It could be used together with environmental engineering modelling formulas for the purpose of determinations of fuzzy functions. The appropriate forms of linguistic variables considering limit cases for the purpose are also discussed.