Assessment of River Water Quality Based on an Improved Fuzzy Matter-Element Model

Yumin Wang, Weijian Ran, Lei Wu and Yifeng Wu
Additional contact information
Yumin Wang: School of Energy and Environment, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China
Weijian Ran: School of Glasgow, University of Electronic Science and Technology, Chengdu 610054, China
Lei Wu: School of Energy and Environment, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China
Yifeng Wu: School of Energy and Environment, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 15, 1-11

Abstract: In this paper, an improved fuzzy matter-element (IFME) method was proposed, which integrates the classical matter-element (ME) method, set pair analysis (SPA), and variable coefficient method (VCM). The method was applied to evaluate water quality of five monitor stations along Caoqiao River in Yixing city, Jiangsu Province, China. The levels of river water quality were determined according to fuzzy closeness degree. Compared with the traditional evaluation methods, the IFME method has several characteristics as follows: (i) weights were determined by the VCM method, which can reduce workload and overcome the adverse effects of abnormal values, (ii) membership degrees were defined by SPA, which can utilize monitored data more scientifically and comprehensively, and (iii) IFME is more suitable for seriously polluted rivers. Overall, these findings reinforce the notion that an integrated approach is essential for attaining scientific and objective assessment of river water quality.

Keywords: improved fuzzy matter-element model (IFME); set pair analysis (SPA); variation coefficient method (VCM); water quality assessment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/15/2793/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/15/2793/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:16:y:2019:i:15:p:2793-:d:254872

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().