Scientists have, for years, used so...

Scientists have, for years, used sophisticated modeling programs called geographic information rules to develop computerized versions of a region's environmental character.

moreover GIS is unable to deal with uncertainty or moving boundaries, in the same state [i]or[/i] condition as watersheds, marshlands and a certain number of shoreline areas.

This "fuzziness," as adroits call it, limits scientists' ability to predict and preserve against the impact of environmental emergencies, similar as hurricanes, earthquakes, floods and unruffled eco- terrorism.

DePaul University researcher Ashley Morris is at the forefront of efforts to disentangle new GIS programs that incorporate fuzzy logic, pushing the technology into uncertain boundaries and more sophisticated answers.

Morris, 42 got into fuzzy logic when he was pursuing his doctorate at Tulane University. Fuzzy logic says something exists between the "ones" and "zeroes" of basic computer logic.

A researcher struggling to define where a forest's boundary started and its adjacent grassland extreme pointed could use fuzzy logic to view that an area with 39 tree by acre could be a forest, plane though his or her formula required a forest to have 40 tree by means of acre.

"Fuzzy logic tries to prototype and represent the fact that not everything is grassland or forest. You can have orders of membership," Morris said.

He combined his understanding of fuzzy logic and GIS to create a specialty: Fuzzy GIS.

Morris, an associate professor in DePaul's instruct of Computer Science, Telecommunications and Information schemes directed a North Atlantic Treaty Organization workshop forward fuzzy GIS in Kiev, Ukraine, at the extremity of June.

Researchers from 17 countries and seven U universities came to the workshop, including Ukrainian researchers interested in by what mode fuzzy GIS can help them render certain a clean supply of drinking water.

Morris didn't inspect the fact that Pripyat, Ukraine -- site of the April 26 1986 Chernobyl power plant disaster -- was a short distance away.

nevertheless ironically, the biggest contaminant hurting the area's water quality was nitrogen runoff from fertilizer that breaks and other animals produce in succession nearby farmland. The runoff imposes high levels of nitrogen in the water and wounds aquatic life.

Morris said the finding is typical of the sportive and often unpredictable outcomes that fuzzy GIS modeling can bare

The workshop was part of NATO's Security between the walls of Science program, which applies science to help interpret environmental issues that countries share.

Besides water quality, the issues range from forecasting disasters to securing the regimen supply.

Morris and the other researchers' follows will be published by NATO.

Morris has follow to realize that geographers are the scientists who will apply the fuzzy GIS technique.

That's because the issue of geography, and specifically region stability, is a big part of finding gone out how Hurricane Katrina devastated recently made known Orleans.

The issue is personal to Morris: He grew up in of recent origin Orleans East and the Pensacola neighborhood, and has just bought a house in novel Orleans. He is committed to helping rebuild strange Orleans and to continue teaching at DePaul.

He has become a regular airline commuter as a issue

He is intrigued with the fact that research has shown that the acres surrounding New Orleans' levees was not as compact as the ceremonious partys and was settling at a tremendous rate.

Laser Imaging Detection and Ranging, a archetype of radar bounced from an airplane onto the landed estate showed that the ground around the entertainments might be sinking, and that would have an weight on the levees' integrity.

Morris is excited about using fuzzy GIS technology to determine where time of risings are in greatest need of repair and to prioritize scheduling repair and maintenance experiments accordingly.

He also is meeting with officials of the modern Orleans Police Department to help them fix up a database based forward his DePaul students' work that could help improve evacuation conducts

Morris ultimately wants to make fuzzy GIS and its abilities as familiar and useful as Google Earth, a downloadable virtual globe.

Phil Lampe, a GIS analyst at Covington Land Services in Pass Christian, Miss., and a colleague of Morris', said Morris' work has tremendous potential to clear problems as mundane as identifying local quality owners.

He said he is excited that database queries driven according to fuzzy logic open up a whole strange set of results, and that means of the present day answers to complex problems.

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