Soft Computing Evaluation Logic

4.4LSP Criteria in Ecology: Selecting Multi‐Species Habitat Mitigation Projects¹

Ecology is an area where evaluation decision problems are frequent, visible, and have wide social impact because they directly or indirectly affect all population. Many human agricultural, industrial, and service activities create different forms of waste and then use environment as a waste sink. Natural systems recycle their waste. Economies are not natural recyclers; when forced, they try to recycle a fraction of waste, but environments are the final repositories of remaining waste products. In addition, even if waste is sufficiently recycled and/or assimilated by environment, the growing human presence creates development and transport activities that cause environmental problems, reducing the natural habitat for fish, wildlife, and plants. That creates a number of delicate decision problems, as well as increasing interest in soft computing techniques for solving such problems [MUN94, VAN04, PAS12, REB14]. LSP is one soft computing decision method that has been successfully used in that context [ALL11, REB16, MES18]. In this chapter, we show the use of LSP criteria for evaluation, comparison, and selection of multispecies habitat mitigation projects.

4.4.1 Multi‐Species Compensatory Mitigation Projects

The first step in the development of LSP criteria is to define a stakeholder. In the case of criteria related to clean air, clean water, global warming, and preserving other species that exist ...