TITLE:
Modeling the Effects of Interactions between Environmental Variables on the State of an Environmental Issue: The Case of the Morelos State in Mexico
AUTHORS:
Fernando Ramos-Quintana, Deny L. Hernández-Rabadán, Enrique Sánchez-Salinas, María Laura Ortiz-Hernández, María Luisa Castrejón-Godínez, Edgar Dantán-González
KEYWORDS:
Environmental Indicators, Graphs, Interactions
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Environmental Protection,
Vol.6 No.3,
March
19,
2015
ABSTRACT: An
important use of environmental indicators is oriented to know their individual
impact on the whole environment quality. Nevertheless, most of the important
causes of environment affectations are derived from multiple interactions
between indicators which correspond more specifically to the environmental
reality. The affectations derived from interactions should be analyzed and
interpreted through numerical expressions representing a relevant challenge for
developers of environmental indicators. To cope with the analysis and
interpretation problem, we propose in this work a methodology in two senses: in
a bottom-up sense a directed graph is built representing interactions between
environmental indicators as behavioral relations, which exert an effect on the
state of an environmental issue of a site over time (10 years); in a top-down
sense to assist users in the analysis and interpretation of interactions
through a computer interface that provides users with the capacity of knowing
how and what relational behaviors between indicators are affecting, the most or
the least, the performance of the environmental issue being studied. This
methodology was applied to the analysis an interpretation of interactions
between environmental variables that affect the state of an environmental
quality issue related with the State of Morelos in Mexico. The results showed
the adequate expressivity of a directed graph to represent interactions allowed
to verify the coherence of the numerical values associated with their behaviors
during a period of time and with their effects on the environmental issue under
study.