Speaker: Professor Ashok Deshpande, Berkeley Initiative in Soft Computing (BISC), University of California, Berkeley
Location: Cassie 3.25 Time/Date: 27th November 2014, 14:00 – 15:00
Zadeh-Deshpande (ZD) fuzzy logic based formalism for linguistic description of air quality: a case study
In everyday life and field such as environmental health people deal with concepts that involve factors that defy classification into crisp sets: safe, harmful, acceptable with mitigation measures, and so on. A classic example is a regulator carefully explaining the result of a detailed quantitative risk assessment report to a community group, only to be asked over and over again. But are we safe? In this case, safe defies crisp classification because it is a multivariate state with gradation that varies among different individuals and groups. Furthermore, it is hard to define the terms such as: health, environment, safe, air and water quality, risk and alike as these are vague or fuzzy terms based on perception
This seminar presents application of a novel fuzzy logic based formalism (ZD approach) to straightway describe air quality in various linguistic terms with linguistic degree of certainty attached to each description. The case study relates to air quality status in Chennai city of India in 2013. Comparative air quality status of New York and Mumbai also from an integral part of the study. The aggregation of the concepts of aleotary as well as epistemic uncertainty in the air quality parametric data is demonstrated using the concept of Degree of Match. ZD approach is complete departure from the traditional air quality index system.
Professor Ashok Deshpande PhD (Engineering)
Founding Chair: Berkeley Initiative in Soft Computing (BISC) – UC Berkeley CA; Guest Faculty: University of California Berkeley; Visiting Professor: Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai India; Adjunct Professor: College of Engineering Pune (COEP) India; Former Deputy Director: National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI)/CSIR
Dr. Ashok has been a WHO Adviser, a Commonwealth Science Council Resource Scientist and a World Bank Project Director for the studies on Probabilistic Risk Assessment for Chemical Process industry.
Dr. Deshpande’s has a passion and mission to propagate the use of fuzzy logic. In 2004 and 2006, Dr. Ashok was invited by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as an expert to organize a training programme at CDTN, Brazil on fuzzy logic and its applications. Between 2006 and 2013 he has organized training workshops on fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic with applications at the University of Illinois Chicago USA (sponsored by VRI Chicago), UBC Canada, Tribhuvan University Nepal , LTU Sweden, VIT Spain and CSU USA. At present, his doctoral students work mainly on fuzzy logic related topics. Professor Deshpande has delivered seminar at University of Maryland Baltimore (2013), University of Gyor, Hungary (2013) and Harvard University (June 2014). He also organized a workshop as a WHO Adviser in 5 capital cities (Colombo, Dhaka, Yongon, Kathmandu and Delhi) on ‘Unaccounted for Water Management’ and also assisted Danish International Development Authority (DANIDA) as a Project Advisor.
Professor Lotfi Zadeh, the founder of fuzzy logic, after listening to many seminar talks, asked Professor Deshpande to be the Chair of Berkeley Initiative in Soft Computing (BISC). He is also a guest faculty at the University of California Berkeley and visiting scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, CA.