A new method for mining area ecological environment assessment based on credibility measure

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to present a more objective evaluation method for a mining area ecological environment. It proposes the weight of indices with respect to the total goal, and provides a new evaluation method which generalizes the weighted‐average method.

Design/methodology/approach

First, the authors describe the evaluation grades by fuzzy variables in credibility space, and the degree of an index belonging to a grade is transformed to be the credibility measure of a fuzzy event by the credibility inversion theorem. Second, a new algorithm which generalizes the weighted‐average method is proposed to realize the transformation from the credibility degree of the underlying indices to the credibility degree of the total target.

Findings

The method proposed in this paper can obtain the correct results illustrated with a numerical evaluation example. The comparison with two other methods shows that the proposed method has stronger classification ability.

Originality/value

The new method presented in this paper generalizes the weighted‐average method, and provides methods for other evaluation systems with a hierarchical structure.

Citation

Chen, J., Ma, L. and Zhang, H. (2013), "A new method for mining area ecological environment assessment based on credibility measure", Kybernetes, Vol. 42 No. 1, pp. 55-66. https://doi.org/10.1108/03684921311295475