Fuzzy Information and Decision Processes

Abstract

The problem of data gathering, information processing and decision analysis is of great concern to the field of systems engineering, engineering and other non-engineering fields. The pioneer work of Wiener and Shannon deals with the statistical aspects of information processing which has proved to be very useful in transmission, statistical measure and certain type of statistical decision analysis. However, when one is concerned with the 'meaning1 of the information and its use in the decision analysis, he has to deal with a different framework. This framework is based upon the fuzzy set theory and possibility theory. Statistical theory deals with the probabilistic aspects of information, whereas the possibility theory helps to model human-like information processing and decision analysis aspects. It has applications in the areas such as medical diagnosis, artificial intelligence, approximate reasoning, behavioural sciences, socio-economic processes, and in the design of feedback algorithms implementing the experience of a human operator in the feedback loop.