Fuzzy-GA modeling in air quality assessment

In this paper, the authors have suggested and implemented the defined soft computing methods in air quality classification with case studies. The first study relates to the application of Fuzzy C mean (FCM) clustering method in estimating pollution status in cities of Maharashtra State, India. In this study, the computation of weighting factor using a new concept of reference group is successfully demonstrated. The authors have also investigated the efficacy of fuzzy set theoretic approach in combination with genetic algorithm in straightway describing air quality in linguistic terms with linguistic degree of certainty attached to each description using Zadeh-Deshpande (ZD) approach. Two metropolitan cities viz., Mumbai in India and New York in the USA are identified for the assessment of the pollution status due to their somewhat similar geographical features. The case studies infer that the fuzzy sets drawn on the basis of expert knowledge base for the criteria pollutants are not much different from those obtained using genetic algorithm. Pollution forecast using various methods including fuzzy time series forms an integral part of the paper.