Propagation of Interval and Probabilistic Uncertainty in Cyberinfrastructure-related Data Processing and Data Fusion (Studies in Systems, Decision and Control, 15)

On various examples ranging from geosciences to environmental sciences, thisbook explains how to generate an adequate description of uncertainty, how to justifysemiheuristic algorithms for processing uncertainty, and how to make these algorithmsmore computationally efficient. It explains in what sense the existing approach touncertainty as a combination of random and systematic components is only anapproximation, presents a more adequate three-component model with an additionalperiodic error component, and explains how uncertainty propagation techniques canbe extended to this model. The book provides a justification for a practically efficientheuristic technique (based on fuzzy decision-making). It explains how the computationalcomplexity of uncertainty processing can be reduced. The book also shows how totake into account that in real life, the information about uncertainty is often onlypartially known, and, on several practical examples, explains how to extract the missinginformation about uncertainty from the available data.