Publication detail

Complex biofuels related scenarios generated by qualitative reasoning under severe information shortages: A review

DOHNAL, M.

Original Title

Complex biofuels related scenarios generated by qualitative reasoning under severe information shortages: A review

Type

journal article in Web of Science

Language

English

Original Abstract

There is a broad spectrum of BR (Biofuel Related) models. However the models are highly specific. Such models cannot flexibly support complex decision making activities to identify feasible trade-offs among many objective functions. They represent just one point of view; e.g. engineering, company economics. Therefore CBRMs (Complex Biofuel Related Model) are studied in this paper. CBRMs must cover additional aspects, e.g. macroeconomic, ecology, sociology and politics. Such models are inevitably unique, partially subjective, inconsistent, vague and multidimensional. AI (Artificial Intelligence) has developed a number of tools to solve such problems. Qualitative reasoning is one of them. It is based on the least information intensive quantifiers i.e. trends. There are just three trend / qualitative values: plus/increasing; zero/constant; negative/decreasing. There are many CBRM items related to soft aspects e.g. politics, taxation etc. which cannot be quantified by numbers. They are too vague. For example – if the political/sociological sensitivity of land ownership is increasing then the cost of biofuels is increasing. Such verbal knowledge item cannot be incorporated into a traditional numerical model. The paper describes developments of CBRMs based on expert knowledge and common sense. A consensus among experts is often not reached because of substantial subjectivity of experts’ knowledge. A qualitative intersection of CBRMs developed by several experts is simple. The case study presents a model based on integration of 10 heuristics using 9 variables e.g. Refinery Capacity, Cost of Biofuel Production, and Biofuel Demand. The result is represented by 13 scenarios. The paper is self-contained, no a prior knowledge of qualitative models is required.

Keywords

Qualitative model; Qualitative reasoning; Biofuel; Complex biofuel related model

Authors

DOHNAL, M.

Released

22. 7. 2016

Publisher

Elsevier

ISBN

1364-0321

Periodical

RENEWABLE & SUSTAINABLE ENERGY REVIEWS

Year of study

65

Number

11

State

United States of America

Pages from

677

Pages to

684

Pages count

9

URL

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032116303574

BibTex

@article{BUT128061,
  author="Mirko {Dohnal}",
  title="Complex biofuels related scenarios generated by qualitative reasoning under severe information shortages: A review",
  journal="RENEWABLE & SUSTAINABLE ENERGY REVIEWS",
  year="2016",
  volume="65",
  number="11",
  pages="677--684",
  doi="10.1016/j.rser.2016.07.029",
  issn="1364-0321",
  url="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032116303574"
}