Open source tool in R language to estimate the inference of the Fuzzy Cognitive Map in environmental decision making

Abstract

Fuzzy cognitive maps (FCMs) have gained popularity within the scientific community due to their capabilities in modelling and decision making for complex problems. However, despite the large number of papers presenting advances in mathematical formulation and applications of FCMs, along with some recent tools for this soft computing technique, there is a lack of open source tools with sufficient flexibility for modelling and inference in diverse application domains. Filling this gap, this paper presents an open source package in R programming language, called the ‘fcm’ package, which is able to do scenario analyses and to examine and estimate the inference of FCM, using the fcm.infer function. Six different inference rules (kosko, modified-kosko, rescale rule, and the clamped versions of these rules) and four threshold functions (bivalent, trivalent, sigmoid and hyperbolic tangent) are provided. This open-source package is available in CRAN and is relatively easy to use, even for less experienced users. It thus provides the opportunity for researchers in different fields to analyse their weighted matrices as FCM. This paper shows examples and visualizations to demonstrate the proposed open source FCM package for environmental modelling and decision making.