Modeling the Effects of Interactions between Environmental Variables on the State of an Environmental Issue: The Case of the Morelos State in Mexico

• 作者: Deny L. Hernández-Rabadán Edgar Dantán-González Enrique Sánchez-Salinas Fernando Ramos-Quintana María Laura Ortiz-Hernández María Luisa Castrejón-Godínez
• 来源期刊: 环境保护(英文)
• 学科: 医学
• 关键词: ENVIRONMENTAL INDICATORS GRAPHS INTERACTIONS
• 年，卷（期）: 2015,（3）
• 页码范围: 225-236
• 页数: 12页
• 分类号: R73

摘要

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.