Elsevier

Ecological Informatics

Volume 24, November 2014, Pages 186-193
Ecological Informatics

TÉRA: A tool for the environmental risk assessment of genetically modified plants

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoinf.2014.09.001Get rights and content
Under a Creative Commons license
open access

Highlights

  • Development of a software tool for the environmental risk assessment (ERA) of genetically modified plants (GMPs).

  • First attempt of making automatized and standardized the whole ERA process.

  • The tool is based on the fuzzy decision reasoning.

  • No fuzzy-based systems for ERA of GMPs have been developed yet, therefore the tool is a novelty.

Abstract

Environmental risk assessment (ERA) of the deliberate release of genetically modified plants is a very complex task, due to several environmental parameters to take into consideration to end up with a reliable decision. In the European Union, ERA is currently performed by the human experts on the basis of their own personal experience and knowledge. In this paper, a software tool, TÉRA, for the ERA of genetically modified plants, is proposed. TÉRA has the aim of helping the experts in making a proper risk assessment. TÉRA, based on a fuzzy inference engine, is conceived as a client–server architecture implemented in the form of a web application. TÉRA decisions, performed on field trial case studies, have been validated by a pool of ERA experts not involved in the TÉRA development.

Keywords

Environmental risk assessment
Genetically modified plant
Fuzzy reasoning
Expert system
Web application

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