Using soft-computing methods for environmental quality assessment

In order to quantify environmental impacts of economic activities environmental indicators are relevant to be used. Discussions on a global level regarding the environmental quality are nowadays connected to the concept of sustainable development. For the operationalisation of sustainable development indicators for economic, environmental and social aspects have to be developed and used. Worldwide several environmental indicators are used, especially for air and water pollution. In the present paper a possibility to define in a modular way an environmental indicator will be presented by taking into consideration the impact on health, impact on ecosphere as well as the emitted quantity of different air pollutants. An aggregation method based on fuzzy logic will be presented. The obtained results will be discussed and conclusions concerning the usage potential of the presented methodology will be drawn. Introduction. Starting with the '70 years the world began to realize also the dangers and undesired effects of human activities, especially industrial ones. After the Conference for Environment in Stockholm, 1972 and the first report to the Club of Rome "The Limits to Growth" (Meadows et al 1972) was understood that besides wanted effects of technological progress, undesired and negative effects can appear. After this time the environmental awareness in the Western world began changing. At that time it became very clear that the occurred regional and global environmental problems are very serious and urgently need to be solved. Nowadays we confront us with several global problems, which can be mostly grouped in three categories: world population growth, growth of energy and natural resources consumption and environmental pollution (Jischa 2005) (Figure 1). Worldwide began discussions on scientific, political and social levels in order to find solutions for the problems shown above, which could be applicable with respect to regional differences to the developed as well as to the developing countries. The Brundtland Report of the World Council on Environment and Development represented a result of these worldwide political discussions. The concept of sustainable development was defined in the Brundtland Report 1987 (Hauff 1987) and accepted as a possible solution for the global complex ecological, economical and social problems. The concept of sustainable development was very much discussed during the Conference for Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro 1992, the most important result of the debates in 1992 being represented by the conference closing act, the "Agenda 21" (Agenda 21 1992). Many actions after this time have emphasized that the evolution of technical, social and ecological systems has to be analysed in synergetic relation. At this point several events can be mentioned like, for instance, the Western Cape Sustainable Development Conference 2005 in Cape Town, South Africa (SD Conference) as well as the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), held in two phases, 2003 in Geneva, Switzerland, and 2005 in Tunis, Tunisia (WSIS 2005). Sustainable development has become a widely used term today. However, looking at texts dealing with the topic, the impression arises that there are as many definitions of sustainable development as there are users of the term. In order to make this concept more understandable rules, strategies and principles of sustainable development have been defined (NRC 2000). The general Brundtland definition was worldwide accepted, but together with the definitions, rules, strategies and principles, it does not give a concrete methodology, how to apply it to the real concrete situations on the regional level (Jischa 2005).