A general methodology for data-based rule building and its application to

natural disaster management

J. Tinguaro Rodrguez

, Begona Vitoriano, Javier Montero

Department of Statistics and Operational Research, Faculty of Mathematics, Complutense University of Madrid, Plaza de Ciencias 3, 28040 Madrid, Spain
a r t i c l e i n f o
Keywords:
Decision support systems
Data-based inductive reasoning
Humanitarian logistics
Natural disaster risk management
Emergency management
a b s t r a c t
Risks derived from natural disasters have a deeper impact than the sole damage suffered by the affected
zone and its population. Because disasters can affect geostrategic stability and international safety,
developed countries invest a huge amount of funds to manage these risks. A large portion of these funds
are channeled through United Nations agencies and international non-governmental organizations
(NGOs), which at the same time are carrying out more and more complex operations. For these reasons,
technological support for these actors is required, all the more so because the global economic crisis is
placing emphasis on the need for efciency and transparency in the management of (relatively limited)
funds. Nevertheless, currently available sophisticated tools for disaster management do not t well into
these contexts because their infrastructure requirements usually exceed the capabilities of such
organizations. In this paper, a general methodology for inductive rule building is described and applied
to natural-disaster management. The application is a data-based, two-level knowledge decision support
system (DSS) prototype which provides damage assessment for multiple disaster scenarios to support
humanitarian NGOs involved in response to natural disasters. A validation process is carried out to
measure the accuracy of both the methodology and the DSS.
& 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Factors such as climate change and the growing population
density of many cities and countries are putting more and more
people throughout the world at risk of suffering due to natural
disasters [17]. Recent tragic events such as the April 2009 LAquila
earthquake in Italy or Hurricane Katrina in 2005 remind us that,
even inside developed countries, there exist many population
groups which are vulnerable to the impact of adverse natural
phenomena [19].
Natural disasters have consequences not only for the popula-
tion which is directly affected. They can also have profound
implications for large sectors of the economy and the political
system of the affected region, especially in developing countries.
As shown in [20], the impact of a disaster in a region, if not
managed properly, can produce political and social instability
and affect international security and relations. Therefore, the
development of models and tools to mitigate the consequences
and risks of natural disasters is a key issue in todays global
world.
This paper continues the basic discussion initiated in [22],
presenting a new version of SEDD (an acronym for expert system
for disaster diagnosis in Spanish) which uses fuzzy logic. SEDD is a
decision support system (DSS) prototype designed to provide
support to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) involved in
response to natural disasters. As shall be seen in the next section,
NGOs currently play a crucial role in mitigating the consequences
of disasters, especially in developing countries. Moreover, they are
clamoring for better technological support for their decision
processes, a eld in which, quite surprisingly, almost nothing has
been done.
The SEDD methodology is based on an inductive data-based
approach (in the sense described in [29]) in which a large
database of historical disaster instances is scanned and analyzed
to create rules which can be used to assess the consequences of
almost every possible disaster scenario.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: the
problem addressed and its importance in natural-disaster risk
management is discussed in Section 2, where a review of state-of-
the-art DSS addressing similar problems is also carried out. The
knowledge representation model and the algorithms used by
SEDD are described in Section 3. In particular, this section
presents a general inductive methodology for building fuzzy rules
from data. Rule aggregation and inference are then performed by
means of a weighted averaging operators approach. Section 4
describes and discusses the computational experiments carried
out to assess the accuracy of the model. Finally, conclusions are
presented in Section 5.
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doi:10.1016/j.cor.2009.11.014

Corresponding author. Tel.: +34913944535.

E-mail address: jtrodrig@mat.ucm.es (J. Tinguaro Rodrguez).
Please cite this article as: Tinguaro Rodrguez J, et al. A general methodology for data-based rule building and its application to natural
disaster management. Computers and Operation Research (2009), doi:10.1016/j.cor.2009.11.014
Computers & Operations Research ] (]]]]) ]]]]]]
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2. NGOs and natural-disaster risk management
As stated above, mitigating the effects of disasters is an issue of
growing importance in the current globalized world, and not only
for humanitarian reasons. It is stated in [20] that developed
countries invest a huge amount of funds in development
assistance and other disaster-mitigation policies to avoid the
risks of geostrategic destabilization produced by natural and
anthropogenic disasters. Most of these aid funds are channeled to
developing countries through United Nations (UN) agencies and
international NGOs. These actors are involved because of their
supposed political neutrality and their links with target popula-
tions, which enable them to access politically unstable countries
which otherwise would not authorize any external interference.
In fact, NGOs and UN international relief agencies channel more
than 60% of the total funding devoted to humanitarian aid
throughout the world, as shown for instance in [26].
In recent years, the budgets and organizations devoted to
emergency and humanitarian aid have experienced substantial
growth, i.e., this sector of strategic activity is getting bigger over
time [26]. As often occurs, this continuous growth has entailed
the emergence of management difculties and efciency pro-
blems as the complexity of the actions and operations developed
by the actors has increased.
On the other hand, the current global crisis is placing emphasis
on the need for management transparency and efciency in
practically all elds of human activity. Lavish, uncontrolled
spending is no longer allowed. Consequently, efciency in disaster
management becomes crucial. For these reasons, humanitarian
logistics is an emerging eld which is becoming more and more
relevant [30] and which is also drawing attention to some
interesting problems in operations research.
Disaster management and mitigation [10,19,32] is not an easy
task and usually requires much analysis and many resources to
design the right policy (to reduce vulnerability) at the right place
(the vulnerable groups). This complexity suggests the use of the
decision support (DSS) methodology, for example, to assess
vulnerability [15] or to develop emergency plans [31]. In fact,
main NGOs claim for specic technology to support such a
complex decision making. There is a crying need to develop
models and tools to address the specic problems of these
organizations.
In particular, this paper will focus on decision and assessment
problems arising in the context of NGOs involved in response to
natural disasters.
2.1. Problem formulation
The main objective of SEDD is to support NGO decision-makers
involved in international response and relief to people affected by
a natural disaster. As soon as the NGO receives the rst notice of
the occurrence of a potential disaster, it starts a decision process
which is intended to reach a conclusion about whether or not
suitable conditions exist to initiate a relief operation. It could be
that a particular disaster scenario does not t the NGOs
requirements or constraints regarding the nature of an interven-
tion, size of disaster, or logistical capabilities. This decision
process, usually under time pressure, must be based on the NGOs
own internal information (funding, stockpiled resources, available
personnel, etc.) as well as on knowledge and information
available about the disaster case under study. Because informa-
tion in the rst moments just after a disaster occurs tends to be
confused, imprecise, or incomplete, uncertainty about what is
really happening is a component which must be modeled. Despite
all this uncertainty, a quick decision is needed.
It should be recalled at this point that NGOs are normally
specialized in one or more basic components of the relief task
(such as health care, water and sanitation, or shelter and site
management), but they are not specialized in responding to
earthquakes, oods, or any other specic disaster scenario. Rather,
NGOs are concerned with helping people, regardless of whether
these people are suffering because of a drought or a hurricane.
Moreover, international relief operations carried out by these
NGOs are assumed to follow the quality standards and guidelines
established by the Humanitarian Charter of the Sphere Project.
These standards are set up by the United Nations (UN) and
relevant international NGOs and contain a set of minimum
standards for disaster response that sets out, for the rst time
ever, what people affected by a disaster have the right to expect
from humanitarian assistance in the basic components of aid:
water and sanitation, nutrition, food security, shelter, and health
care [14]. These standards also emphasize a correct and precise
assessment of needs as a critical step for success in relief
operations.
Therefore, in order to decide on the appropriateness of an
intervention which meets these quality standards, NGOs need an
initial assessment of disaster consequences being as precise as
possible. It should be stressed that it is in view of this assessment
that the decision-maker can determine what kind of intervention
is going to be necessary and whether or not the NGO can meet its
requirements. Moreover, this decision must be made for every
combination of disaster type and place. Furthermore, this initial
assessment has to be done in a context of uncertainty and time
pressure. Because all these factors normally appear together,
expertize is needed to infer what is really going on and thereby
support this urgent decision process.
The main objective of the SEDD project is to assist interna-
tional relief operations, supporting decision-makers by means of
an inference tool capable of assessing the consequences of almost
every combination of adverse phenomena and location, based on
available information and taking into account the reliability of
that information. In addition, SEDD should provide an estimate of
the percentage of assistance effort which, as a consequence of the
previous assessment, needs to be directed towards each of the
basic relief components referred to in the Humanitarian Charter of
the Sphere Project. It should be pointed that this problem
formulation comes from the authors encounters with the staff
of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent
Societies (IFRC) of Spain.
On the other hand, it is obvious that constraints must be
imposed on the infrastructure requirements of a decision support
tool operating in this context. As will become apparent in the next
section, it is necessary to make realistic assumptions in this area if
the DSS will have to be used in organizations or countries where
the operational infrastructure cannot support highly sophisticated
and precise methodology. In this sense, SEDD is intended to be a
web-available (see for instance [22]), low-cost, tailor-made
solution that should t specic NGO constraints such as ease of
use, low computational and personnel requirements, and not
relying on highly sophisticated and precise data (that in addition
might not be available on time).
2.2. DSS for disaster management
This section is devoted to a review of the state of the art in
disaster management DSS (DSS-DM). In particular, the focus will
be on DSS which address the problem formulated above. In this
sense, the main point of discussion is that current DSS-DM do not
meet the needs of NGOs for two main reasons: rst, they are not
designed to address the specic problem of response to any
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Please cite this article as: Tinguaro Rodrguez J, et al. A general methodology for data-based rule building and its application to natural
disaster management. Computers and Operation Research (2009), doi:10.1016/j.cor.2009.11.014
ARTICLE IN PRESS
possible natural disaster in any place; second, their sophistication
and infrastructure requirements usually exceed those available in
NGOs and in countries requiring humanitarian aid.
As stated above, the difculties of disaster-mitigation tasks led
to the introduction of decision support tools in the public sphere
of emergency management [31,12,13]. In fact, such tools have
become widely used by decision-makers in the public adminis-
trations of developed countries because of their ability to
integrate multiple sources of information and to provide a
representation of disaster scenarios to assess vulnerability and
emergency response policies and/or to support decisions in the
preparation and relief phases.
Because of this dependence on public administrators, in a rst
stage, the scope of research was restricted to modeling the action
of one phenomenon in a specic place (earthquakes in California
[11], hurricanes in Florida [28], oods in Italy [27], etc.). However,
it has gradually become clear [6,9] that integration of models and
methodologies is necessary to develop more useful and exible
systems. However, few practical systems based on this perspec-
tive are already in operation. One of them [24] is HAZUS, the
FEMA solution for hurricanes, oods, and earthquakes. Another
proposal is that described in [4], where a modular approach is
used to devise a dynamic integrated model for a DSS-DM which
also takes environmental variables into account.
In this paper, an alternative data-based approach is proposed
to assess potential damage arising from various combinations of
phenomena and locations.
Together with other complex data structures and models, a
distinctive feature of current DSS-DM is the use of geographical
information systems (GIS). Because GIS are designed to support
spatial decision making, they are very useful tools in the
emergency management eld, where there is a strong need to
address a number of spatial decisions [24]. In this way, a GIS
should make possible a more precise assessment of vulnerability
under various possible scenarios and a better response imple-
mentation. In fact, a GIS is already present in almost every
DSS-DM (see [7] for a survey, and also [1]). This trend makes
current DSS-DM sophisticated and powerful tools that have
become certainly indispensable in developed countries.
Nevertheless, the high sophistication of these systems requires
large computational and information resources, such as trained
personnel or precise data, which could be unrealistic expectations
in some contexts because they clearly exceed the infrastructure
available. For instance, the expertise and precision needed to use a
GIS could make the system much more complicated for end users.
Furthermore, complex data such as a building census or precise
meteorological information could be unavailable or unreliable.
This is the main reason why HAZUS [24] and other highly
sophisticated DSS methodologies have not been implemented in
most developing countries or in most NGOs. In this sense, some
authors (see [1], for example) are clamoring for exible, low-cost
decision support tools to be developed for such contexts. A key
characteristic of future emergency decision support systems
should be high adaptability [16].
In conclusion, although a wide variety of DSS-DM are being
used by public-sector managers in developed countries, not much
can be found which addresses the particular problems experi-
enced by NGOs and described above. Moreover, some methodol-
ogies which have been designed for extensive application, like
HAZUS, fail to meet these needs because of a lack of adaptability
to particular infrastructure requirements.
The SEDD project developed in this paper represents an original
and specic decision support system that provides a suitable tool for
use in an NGO decision-making context and enables the assessment
of multiple disaster scenarios, similarly in this sense to HAZUS or to
the integrated approach presented in [4].
3. A general methodology for building rules from data
This section rst describes the SEDD knowledge representation
model, which takes a database as input and produces, by means of
a set of classes (crisp or fuzzy), a matrix representing historical
knowledge about disasters. Next, the approach used to build up
three types of inference rules, using this matrix along with the
raw data as input, is described. These two levels of knowledge are
stored in SEDDs knowledge base (KB). Finally, the inference
process carried out by SEDDs inference engine (IE) is described.
It uses the rules in the KB along with a fact base (FB) containing
raw data related to a disaster case under study to produce an
assessment of the disasters possible consequences. All this
methodology is presented in a rather general way to emphasize
that it is general enough to serve as a methodological base for a
wide class of DSS which could address problems other than
natural-disaster risk management. Another methodology for
building fuzzy rules from data is described in [8].
3.1. Knowledge representation
To build up rules from data and to carry out a useful inference
process, it is necessary to dene rst the general framework and
mathematical models used to represent the information and
knowledge with which SEDD will work. In other words, a
mathematical model of knowledge representation is needed to
give the data an appropriate shape or structure in agreement with
the data structures required as input to the rule-building and
inference processes.
Following the approach described in [23], the basic raw data
used by SEDD are considered as a database, which can be viewed
as a real-valued matrix D= (d
ki
)
mxn
having m instances and n
variables, X
1
; . . . ; X
n
. Within the semantics of SEDD, each of these
m instances represents a historical disaster scenario and each of
the n variables a quantity of interest for describing these disaster
scenarios.
The range of each variable X
i
is then partitioned into a set of c
i
classes A
i1
; . . . ; A
ic
i
, which can be fuzzy or crisp. In this paper, these
classes are intended to be linearly ordered, i.e., A
ij
oA
ij
/ iff j oj
/
, but
a different structure could also be proposed, as explained in [18].
Here capital letters will be used to denote the values of
variables in the database, i.e., X
k
i
=d
ki
for k =1; . . . ; m and
i =1; . . . ; n. Lower-case letters will be used to denote values of
categories, i.e., x
k
ij
i
=m
A
ij
(X
k
i
) for j
i
=1; . . . ; c
i
, where m
A
ij
is the
membership function of class A
ij
. In the crisp case, it is assumed
that the value of X
k
i
lies in exactly one class j
/
, i.e., m
A
ij
/
(X
k
i
) =1 and
m
A
ij
(X
k
i
) =0 if j aj
/
. In the fuzzy case, m
A
ij
(X
k
i
)A[0; 1] and the classes
do not necessarily form a fuzzy partition in the sense of Ruspini,
i.e.,
P
c
i
j = 1
m
A
ij
(X
k
i
) does not need to sum exactly to one (see for
example [2]). In fact, missing values of any variable are modeled
by assigning the value 0 to every class.
In this way, the rst level of knowledge representation in SEDD
is constituted by a matrix H = (h
kj
)
mxl
, with l =
P
n
i = 1
c
i
being the
total number of categories or classes, and such that h
kj
: =
x
k
ij
i
=m
A
ij
i
(X
k
i
) for all k =1; . . . ; m, i =1; . . . ; n, j
i
=1; . . . ; c
i
, and
j =1; . . . ; l. Reference to the ith variable is removed in the h
kj
s
because it is intended that categories in H will be sorted by the
variables to which they correspond.
3.2. Data-based rule building
The matrix H constitutes the rst level of knowledge in SEDD
and represents historical information of the type in place x there
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Please cite this article as: Tinguaro Rodrguez J, et al. A general methodology for data-based rule building and its application to natural
disaster management. Computers and Operation Research (2009), doi:10.1016/j.cor.2009.11.014
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was phenomena y and the damage was z. However, to obtain
inference capability, a second level of knowledge, or meta-
knowledge, is needed: something like when phenomenon y occurs
in places like x, the damage tends to be z. This second-level
knowledge, to which we shall refer as rules, must be extracted
from the rst-level knowledge (the data), and therefore it is said
that these rules are data-based.
Conceptually, the proposed SEDD methodology for rule
extraction is based on the idea that a rule is built up through
successive repetition and experience of similar situations. It is
usually accepted that whenever a relation is experienced or
successively repeated, its rule condition is strengthened.
In fact, when faced with the problem formulated in the last
section, the expert implicitly tries to relate the current disaster
scenario under study with other similar past situations and to
apprehend whether the rules or relations extracted from the
analysis of these past situations are fullled by the present one.
Although the expert may not be able to enunciate working rules
explicitly, his/her extensive knowledge of historical disaster cases
similar to the current one under study should enable the expert to
know what effects can be expected to occur. An estimated
assessment of the consequences of the present disaster can then
be generated by the expert.
The approach presented in this paper follows the principles
just described. Each instance of the database in which the same
classes of different variables appear together is considered as
evidence for the existence of a relationship between these
categories. In this sense, what is going to be measured and
translated into rules is the trend of some variables to occur as
other variables appear.
Rules still need some variables to play the role of premises or
independent variables, with the rest serving as consequences or
dependent variables. Thus, from the set of n variables X
1
; . . . ; X
n
, a
subset of p premise variables is extracted, leaving another subset
of q =n p consequence variables. Because in this approach the
conclusion for each consequence variable is independent of the
conclusion for any other, for the sake of simplicity in presentation,
it will be assumed without loss of generality that q =1, i.e., that
there exists only one consequence or dependent variable for each
set of premise variables. In the rest of this paper, this dependent
variable will be denoted by Y, with {X
1
; . . . ; X
p
] being the set of
premises or independent variables.
Moreover, if T is a t-norm (see for instance [25]), let T(H)
denote the c
1
c
p
m multidimensional matrix such that
T(H)(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
) =T(H; j
1
; . . . ; j
p
) = (T(x
1
1j1
; . . . ; x
1
pjp
); . . . ; T(x
m
1j1
; . . . ; x
m
pjp
))
t
;
for j
i
=1; . . . ; c
i
and i =1; . . . ; n. In this way, for each combination
(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
) of the premise indices, T(H) is a vector containing the
membership degrees in the conjunction class A
1j
1
4 4A
pjp
of
the values of the premise variables for each of the m instances in
the database. Let y
j
also denote the vector of length m such that
y
j
= (y
1
j
; . . . ; y
m
j
)
t
= (m
B
j
(Y
1
); . . . ; m
B
j
(Y
m
))
t
; j =1; . . . ; d;
where B
j
is any of the d =c
p1
classes dened in the last section
for the dependent variable Y, and Y
k
represents the value of this
variable for the kth instance in the database, k =1; . . . ; m.
In this paper, three types of rules and the algorithms to
compute them are described. Formally, a rule is understood to be
an expression of the type
R : if X
1
is A
1
and X
2
is A
2
and. . . and X
p
is A
p
then Y is B;
where each A
i
is a class of the ith premise variable and B is the
conclusion assigned to the dependent variable Y. Thus, the
meaning of the three different groups of rules is that three
different types of conclusions B will be assigned to the dependent
variable Y:
+ In the rst type of rules, a degree of possibility p
j
is assigned to
each one of the d classes, B
j
(j =1; . . . ; d). Therefore,
B =p = (p
1
; . . . ; p
d
). As shall be seen in the next section, this
leads to a class B
j
or a union of adjacent classes as a prediction
of the dependent variable Y. This group of rules is useful to deal
with categorical variables and also with numerical variables
which have previously been classied, as is the case with
linguistically assessed variables.
+ The second group of rules assigns to Y a mean value y in the
range of the dependent variable. The algorithm that computes
this value makes use of the possibilities p determined by the
previous group of rules to weight the values of Y. Therefore,
these rules are dependent on the rules in the rst group, and in
this case, B =y. This group of rules works with numerical data
and is therefore designed to predict numerical variables.
+ Finally, the last group of rules assigns to Y an interval [b
1
; b
2
] of
possible values of the dependent variable. The lower and upper
extremes of this interval are computed by means of fuzzy or
crisp order statistics, respectively, and therefore the algorithm
to compute these rules is in fact an algorithm to compute those
statistics. Thus, for this group of rules, B = [b
1
; b
2
]. Intervals and
order statistics work well when dealing with numerical
variables which exhibit large variability, outliers, or both.
Although the two are similar (and in fact identical in the crisp
case), it is important not to confuse these rules with the forecasts
that constitute the outcome of the inference process described in
the next subsection. As will be seen shortly, this inference process
makes use of various rules along with information about the
disaster case under study to construct the forecasts, while the
rule-building process described in this section makes use of data
and rst-level knowledge to extract the second-level knowledge
(i.e., to build up the rules).
Another important remark before describing the algorithms for
rule extraction: it should be noted that, in most of the cases which
pose the problem of building rules from data, the set of rules to
create is not previously dened. This amounts to saying that the
set of combinations of independent variables and/or classes of
these variables that have to be used as premises of the rules is not
given. Furthermore, every possible combination of classes could
occur in practice and could constitute an important premise for
explaining the data. For this reason, regardless of the fact that this
could lead to exponentially increasing computational require-
ments, this research presents algorithms to build every possible
rule, leaving for a discussion at the end of this section and for
future research the issue of how to develop heuristics to avoid
creating all the rules. In any case, this possibility will not
constitute a problem for a DSS with small data requirements,
which, as stated in the previous section, is the case for SEDD.
Case 1. B =p. Calculation of dependent class possibilities p
Given the matrix H, a class B
j
of the dependent variable Y, and a
combination (j
1
; . . . ; j
p
) of classes of the p premise variables,
j A{1; . . . ; d] and j
i
A{1; . . . ; c
i
] for all i =1; . . . ; p, the possibility in H
of the class B
j
when A
1j
1
4 4A
pjp
is true is dened as a weighted
aggregation of its membership degrees over all m instances in the
database, i.e.,
p
H
(j[j
1
; . . . ; j
p
) =
P
m
k = 1
T(x
k
1j1
; . . . ; x
k
pjp
)y
k
j
P
m
k = 1
T(x
k
1j
1
; . . . ; x
k
pjp
)
;
where y
k
j
=m
B
j
(Y
k
) is the membership degree in the jth class of the
kth instance of variable Y and T is the logical operator (usually a
J. Tinguaro Rodr guez et al. / Computers & Operations Research ] (]]]]) ]]]]]] 4
Please cite this article as: Tinguaro Rodrguez J, et al. A general methodology for data-based rule building and its application to natural
disaster management. Computers and Operation Research (2009), doi:10.1016/j.cor.2009.11.014
ARTICLE IN PRESS
t-norm) that models the conjunction and. In vector notation,
p
H
(j[j
1
; . . . ; j
p
) =
T(H; j
1
; . . . ; j
p
)
t
y
j
T(H; j
1
; . . . ; j
p
)
t
1
;
where 1 represents a vector with m ones, i.e., 1 = (1; . . . ; 1
z}|{
m
), in such
a way that the denominator is equal to the sum of all the elements
in T(H; j
1
; . . . ; j
p
).
Proposition 1. If the variable Y does not have missing values and if
the classes B
j
, j =1; . . . ; d, form a Ruspini partition, then the
possibilities of the d classes of Y given any combination of premises
(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
) sum up to one.
Proof.
X
d
j = 1
p
H
(j[j
1
; . . . ; j
p
) =
P
m
k = 1
T(x
k
1j
1
; . . . ; x
k
pjp
)
P
d
j = 1
y
k
j
P
m
k = 1
T(x
k
1j
1
; . . . ; x
k
pjp
)
=
P
m
k = 1
T(x
k
1j
1
; . . . ; x
k
pjp
)
P
m
k = 1
T(x
k
1j
1
; . . . ; x
k
pjp
)
=1: &
Thus, if a variable Y has missing values and its classes form a
Ruspini partition, the proposition just stated means that the
possibilities of Y sum to o1. In this way, it is possible to dene
the ignorance associated with variable Y given a combination of
premises (j
1
; . . . ; j
p
) as one minus the sum of its possibilities for
that combination of premises, i.e., I
Y
(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
) =1
P
d
j = 1

p
H
(j[j
1
; . . . ; j
p
). As explained in [18], the ignorance I is a necessary
class that should be added to the existing set of classes to model
better the underlying learning process.
Case 2. B =y. Calculation of the dependent-variable mean y.
Given H and a combination (j
1
; . . . ; j
p
) of classes of the p
premise variables, j
i
A{1; . . . ; c
i
] for all i =1; . . . ; p, the fuzzy mean
of a crisp variable Y when A
1j
1
4 4A
pjp
is true can be easily
dened as the fraction
X
m
k = 1
T(x
k
1j
1
; . . . ; x
k
pjp
)Y
k
X
m
k = 1
T(x
k
1j
1
; . . . ; x
k
pjp
):
,
However, because the variable Y can have not only missing values,
but also outliers in classes with low possibility, it seemed more
realistic to dene this mean value as
y
H
(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
) =
P
m
k = 1
W
k
(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
)T(x
k
1j
1
; . . . ; x
k
pjp
)Y
k
P
m
k = 1
W
k
(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
)T(x
k
1j
1
; . . . ; x
k
pjp
)
:
This expression can be alternatively given in a more compact
vector notation, dening the weights W as
W
k
(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
) =
X
d
j = 1
y
k
j
p
H
(j[j
1
; . . . ; j
p
);
in such a way that
W(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
) = (W
1
(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
); . . . ; W
m
(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
))
t
:
If 3 stands for the element-wise product of matrices and
Y = (Y
1
; . . . ; Y
m
)
t
, then
y
H
(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
) =
(W(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
)3T(H; j
1
; . . . ; j
p
))
t
Y
W(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
)
t
T(H; j
1
; . . . ; j
p
)
:
This way, missing values of Y do not affect the computation.
Moreover, if outliers of Y lie in classes with low or zero possibility,
their values will have little effect on the resulting mean value.
Such a mean y
H
(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
) will be biased towards the classes B
j
with higher possibility p
H
(j[j
1
; . . . ; j
p
), which is a realistic assump-
tion in the authors opinion.
Case 3. B = [b
1
; b
2
]. Calculation of fuzzy order statistics.
Given H and a combination (j
1
; . . . ; j
p
) of classes of the p
premise variables, j
i
A{1; . . . ; c
i
] for all i =1; . . . ; p, if the classes of
the premise variables are fuzzy, it is not obvious how to calculate
the percentiles aA{1; . . . ; 99] of the values of a crisp variable Y for
which A
1j
1
4 4A
pjp
is true. For each instance of Y
k
in H, the truth
value of the conjunction A
1j
1
4 4A
pjp
could take on a different
value T(x
k
1j
1
; . . . ; x
k
pjp
), so it is not possible simply to take as the
a percentile the value of Y below which a percent of the
observations for which A
1j
1
4 4A
pjp
is true may be found.
However, it seems natural to generalize this idea to the fuzzy case
by dening the a percentile as the value of Y below which is
found a percent of the total amount of membership
w(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
) =
P
m
k = 1
T(x
k
1j
1
; . . . ; x
k
pjp
) in the conjunction class
A
1j
1
4 4A
pjp
. The algorithm used to nd this value is the
following:
1. Sort H by the values of Y, removing the instances for which the
value of Y is missing.
2. Dene
k
a
(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
) =min k=
P
k
s = 1
T(x
s
1j
1
; . . . ; x
s
pjp
)4
a
100
w(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
)
n o
.
3. Dene the a percentile as PC
a
(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
) =Y
ka(j1;...;jp)
.
Thus, to build the interval that constitutes the conclusion of the
rules in this third group, two values, a
1
; a
2
A{1; . . . ; 99], a
1
oa
2
,
must be chosen, leading to the interval [PC
a1
(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
);
PC
a
1
(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
)].
These three groups of rules are then stored as vectors or
multidimensional matrices in the SEDD knowledge base. These
matrices constitute the second level of knowledge representation
in SEDD.
3.3. Inference process
To make inferences about the unknown variables of a disaster
case under study, SEDDs inference engine must combine the
known information present in the fact base with the rules stored
in the knowledge base. This is done by using these known data as
the premises of the rules. Without loss of generality, it can be
assumed that the values of variables X
1
; . . . ; X
p
are known and that
it is desired to generate a prediction of the value y of an unknown
variable Y. The values of the known variables in the fact base are
denoted by the vector F = (F
1
; . . . ; F
p
), and f
ij
i
denotes the
membership degree of value F
i
in the class A
ij
i
, i.e., f
ij
i
=m
A
ij
i
(F
i
),
j
i
A{1; . . . ; c
i
] for all i =1; . . . ; p.
The way that predictions are built from these inputs is
basically the same for each of the three groups of rules. However,
because for the rst group a prediction class is needed, different
ways of aggregating the resulting class possibilities B
j
, j =1; . . . ; d,
of the dependent variable Y are described.
Because for the crisp case there is only one combination
(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
) of classes of the independent variables into which the
values F
1
; . . . ; F
p
are classied, the output of the inference process
is simply the conclusion of the rule having the combination of
classes (j
1
; . . . ; j
p
) as its premise. However, in the fuzzy case, the
values F
1
; . . . ; F
p
are usually classied into several combinations
A
1j
1
4 4A
pjp
of classes of the independent variables, and
therefore a way of aggregating the conclusions of the correspond-
ing rules is needed. This aggregation is carried out by means of a
weighted aggregation operator, in which the different truth
degrees T(f
ij
i
; . . . ; f
ijp
) of the values F
1
; . . . ; F
p
lying in each
combination A
1j
1
4 4A
pjp
are used as weights. Thus, because
this case is the more general one, only the construction of
predictions for the fuzzy case is described.
J. Tinguaro Rodr guez et al. / Computers & Operations Research ] (]]]]) ]]]]]] 5
Please cite this article as: Tinguaro Rodrguez J, et al. A general methodology for data-based rule building and its application to natural
disaster management. Computers and Operation Research (2009), doi:10.1016/j.cor.2009.11.014
ARTICLE IN PRESS
3.3.1. Inference process for rules with B=p
Let us rst denote by T(F), p
H
(j), y
H
, and PC
a
i
the c
1
c
p
multidimensional matrices such that
T(F)(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
) : =T(f
1j
i
; . . . ; f
pjp
);
p
H
(j)(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
) : =p
H
(j[j
1
; . . . ; j
p
);
y
H
(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
) : =y
H
(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
);
PC
a
i
(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
) : =PC
a
i
(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
); i =1; 2:
Let us also denote by A:B the Frobenius inner product of two
matrices A and B of the same size c
1
c
p
:
A : B : =
X
c
1
j
1
= 1
. . .
X
cp
jp = 1
A
j1;...;jp
B
j1;...;jp
:
Recall then that the rst group of rules described above will
provide, for each combination (j
1
; . . . ; j
p
) of the independent
classes, a degree of possibility p
H
(j[j
1
; . . . ; j
p
) for each class B
j
of
the dependent variable Y, j =1; . . . ; d. Therefore, for each
j =1; . . . ; d, the nal assessment ^ p
H
(j) of the possibility of these
classes can be calculated as
^ p
H
(j) =
P
c
1
j
1
= 1
. . .
P
cp
jp = 1
T(f
1j
i
; . . . ; f
pjp
)p
H
(j[j
1
; . . . ; j
p
)
P
c
1
j
1
= 1
. . .
P
cp
jp = 1
T(f
1j
i
; . . . ; f
1jp
)
;
or in more compact matrix notation,
^ p
H
(j) =
T(F) : p
H
(j)
T(F) : 1
;
where 1 now stands for a c
1
c
p
matrix of ones. Thus, the
denominator is equal to the sum of all the elements of T(F).
This produces a vector ^ p
H
= ( ^ p
H
(1); . . . ; ^ p
H
(d)) containing an
assessment of the nal possibility of every dependent class.
However, as stated above, what is actually needed is a class that
constitutes a prediction of the true state of variable Y. To construct
this prediction, rst recall that classes were said to have a
structure of linear order. This way, if no class amasses enough
evidence to be considered as a solid prediction, the joint
possibility of adjacent classes (in the sense of linear order) should
be taken into account.
Formally, assume that dA(0; 1) is a threshold value set by the
user to indicate the desired level of evidence that a predicted class
or set of classes must amass. Dene J = {1; . . . ; d] and dene the
set of indices adjacent to a given index j as adj({j]) = {j 1; j 1]
J for each index j AJ. Given a set E J of consecutive indices, i.e.,
such that E =
S
max(E)
j = min(E)
{j], dene adj(E) = {min(E) 1;
max(E)1] J. The following describes three possible ways of
obtaining the nal outcome of this inference process, which are
referred to as optimistic, pessimistic, and neutral for reasons that
become evident by looking at the following algorithm:
1. Prediction=|, S = {j AJ= ^ p
H
(j) =max( ^ p
H
)]
2. DO WHILE prediction=|
IF
P
j AS
^ p
H
(j)Zd THEN Prediction =
S
j AS
B
j
ELSE IF optimistic THEN S =S C {min(adj(S))]
ELSE IF pessimistic THEN S =S C {max(adj(S))]
ELSE IF neutral THEN S =S C {j= ^ p
H
(j) =max
i Aadj(S)
( ^ p
H
(i))]
END DO
Therefore, the optimistic method looks at the classes below the
minimum of ^ p
H
, the pessimistic method searches those above the
maximum of ^ p
H
, and the neutral method always tries to provide a
prediction with the minimum number of classes. Obviously, this
reasoning assumes that lower classes are better (fewer casualties,
injured people, etc.) than higher ones, but the method could be
easily adapted to the inverse case.
Note that because the variable Y can have missing values, not
every value of d leads to a prediction. In this sense, the following
proposition can be formulated:
Proposition 2. If the classes of variable Y form a Ruspini partition,
the preceding algorithm always stops if and only if
dr1 max
j
1
;...;jp
I
Y
(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
).
Proof. Using Proposition 1 and denitions, on the one hand,
X
d
j = 1
^ p
H
(j) =
P
c
1
j
1
= 1
. . .
P
cp
jp = 1
T(f
1j
i
; . . . ; f
pjp
)(1 I
Y
(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
))
P
c
1
j
1
= 1
. . .
P
cp
jp = 1
T(f
1j
i
; . . . ; f
1jp
)
Z
P
c
1
j
1
= 1
. . .
P
cp
jp = 1
T(f
1j
i
; . . . ; f
pjp
)(1 max
j
1
;...;jp
I
Y
(j
1
; :::; j
p
))
P
c
1
j
1
= 1
. . .
P
cp
jp = 1
T(f
1j
i
; . . . ; f
1jp
)
=1 max
j
1
;...;jp
I
Y
(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
):
On the other hand, suppose that the maximum of I
Y
(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
)
occurs when (j
1
; . . . ; j
p
) = (a
1
; . . . ; a
p
). Because one can easily
choose f
1j
i
; . . . ; f
pjp
in such a way that
T(f
1j
i
; . . . ; f
pjp
) =
1 if (j
1
; . . . ; j
p
) = (a
1
; . . . ; a
p
)
0 else
;

the result is a case such that

P
d
j = 1
^ p
H
(j) =
1 max
j
1
;...;jp
I
Y
(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
), which completes the proof. &
Finally, it is important to note that both the ignorance I
Y
and the
number of classes included in a prediction can be seen as a
measure of the uncertainty associated with that prediction.
3.3.2. Inference process for rules with B =y
Recall that this group of rules provides, for each combination
(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
) of the independent classes, an average or mean value
y
H
(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
) of the dependent variable Y when A
1j
1
4 4A
pjp
is
true. Using the weighted aggregation methodology, the outcome
^ y
H
of this inference process can be calculated as
^ y
H
=
P
c
1
j
1
= 1
. . .
P
cp
jp = 1
T(f
1j
i
; . . . ; f
pjp
)y
H
(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
)
P
c1
j1 = 1
. . .
P
cp
jp = 1
T(f
1j
i
; . . . ; f
pjp
)
;
or using the matrix notation already described in the previous
case,
^ y
H
=
T(F) : y
H
T(F) : 1
:
3.3.3. Inference process for rules with B = [b
1
; b
2
]
This group of rules produces, for each combination (j
1
; . . . ; j
p
) of
independent classes, an interval [PC
a
1
(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
); PC
a
1
(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
)] of
values for the predicted value of the dependent variable Y, where
PC
a
i
(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
) is the fuzzy a
i
percentile of the values of Y when
A
1j
1
4 4A
pjp
is true, a
i
A{1; . . . ; 99] i =1; 2. As for the preceding
group of rules, the nal predicted percentiles are calculated
through weighted aggregation as
c
PC
a
i
=
P
c1
j1 = 1
. . .
P
cp
jp = 1
T(f
1j
i
; . . . ; f
pjp
)PC
a
i
(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
)
P
c
1
j
1
= 1
. . .
P
cp
jp = 1
T(f
1j
i
; . . . ; f
pjp
)
;
or in matrix notation,
c
PC
a
i
=
T(F) : PC
a
i
T(F) : 1
:
The interval that constitutes the nal outcome of this inference
process is then given by [
c
PC
a
1
;
c
PC
a
2
]. The length of this interval can
be seen as a measure of the uncertainty associated with variable Y
when the various conjunction classes A
1j
1
4 4A
pjp
hold.
J. Tinguaro Rodr guez et al. / Computers & Operations Research ] (]]]]) ]]]]]] 6
Please cite this article as: Tinguaro Rodrguez J, et al. A general methodology for data-based rule building and its application to natural
disaster management. Computers and Operation Research (2009), doi:10.1016/j.cor.2009.11.014
ARTICLE IN PRESS
3.4. A remark about algorithmic complexity
From the preceding discussion, it follows that an upper bound
for the total number of rules of each type to be created is in the
order of u = (max
i = 1...p
(c
i
))
p
, which is also an upper bound for the
total number of operations to be performed in each of the
inference processes. Therefore, this methodology for rule extrac-
tion leads to algorithms which are exponential in the number p of
premises or independent variables. However, in the crisp case, it
has been shown that only one rule of each group has to be created
and that no inference process is needed at all. With a few
assumptions about the fuzzy classes which are dened for
independent variables, it is possible to reduce u substantially,
although it is possible that exponentiality remains.
For instance, by using triangular orthogonal classes, at most
two of them have a membership degree 40 for each independent
variable, and therefore in this case u =2
p
. By using trapezoidal
orthogonal classes, the worst case also leads to u =2
p
, but it is
strongly probable that for a number of independent variables, say
r of them, only one class has membership degree 40, leading to
u =2
pr
.
Moreover, it is interesting to remember that it is possible to
devise heuristics to achieve a further reduction in the number of
rules to be created, for instance, by assessing rst which rules are
going to have little impact on the predictions.
In any case, as already mentioned, the exponential nature of
these algorithms does not constitute a problem if the number p of
premises is small. In the next section, it will be shown that for a
DSS like SEDD, which is intended to work with a small amount of
easily accessible data, performance could be good enough to
justify this methodology.
4. Computational experiments
4.1. Validation process
This section presents the results of a validation process carried
out to measure of the accuracy of the methodology just described.
As input data for the system, the EM-DAT database (Emergency
Events Database, available at www.emdat.be) of CRED (Center for
Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, www.cred.be) has
been used. This database contains data on over 16,000 natural and
anthropogenic disasters occurring from 1900 to the present all
over the world. Because this database does not provide any
explicit estimation of the vulnerability of each location affected,
to be consistent with the disaster denition used here (see
Section 1), the data have been merged with UN data on the human
development index (HDI), taking this index as an estimate of the
affected countrys vulnerability.
It should be noted that the EM-DAT database contains no
variables which enable a good description of the places affected
by a disaster, even with the addition of the HDI index. The result is
a huge variability of the dependent variables for similar values of
the explanatory variables. For instance, a strong earthquake of
magnitude 8 on the Richter scale was reported in Indonesia in
1979, but it caused only two casualties. However, a weaker quake
of magnitude 7.5 struck the same country in 1992 and produced
at least 2500 casualties. In this sense, a variable such as density of
population in the affected place or some kind of index of human
activity would be needed, although such variables are not at all
easy to obtain. There are also a considerable number of outliers
and a signicant proportion of missing values in the dependent
variables. Last but not least, the mode of the distribution of these
variables usually occurs in the lowest classes, because major
disasters are much talked about and spectacular, but are relatively
uncommon events.
To illustrate the capability of SEDD to evaluate and assess
the consequences of multiple disaster types, it was decided to
focus on the same adverse phenomena that HAZUS [24] is able to
deal with: oods, windstorms (including hurricanes, typhoons,
cyclones, etc.), and earthquakes.
For each type of disaster, the signicant variables considered
here are the following: HDI, magnitude of the disaster (inundated
area, maximum wind speed, magnitude on the Richter scale),
number of casualties (NC), number of injured, homeless, and affected
people, and damage in US dollars. The values of the rst and last
variables are modied to take into account variations of the HDI
index and of currency values and thus to provide a normalized
scale. Therefore, n=7 for this process. Consistently with the
denition of a disaster used here, the rst two variables are taken
as explanatory and the remaining ve as dependent, so p=2
and q=5.
Triangular orthogonal fuzzy classes are used for all the
variables. The details presented here were calculated with the
t-norm T=min. Three classes are dened for the rst independent
variable HDI: low, medium, and high. They closely correspond to
the divisions already made in the UN data. For the variable
magnitude, four classes are constructed, which correspond to very
weak, weak, moderate, and high intensities of the adverse natural
phenomenon. Five classes are dened for each dependent
variable. In particular, those dened for NC are the following: no
casualties, very few, few, quite a lot, and a lot. Therefore, there are
l =32 categories.
For each type of disaster, 10 training sets were randomly
constructed; each one containing 80% of the available sample,
while keeping aside 20% as a validation set. The rst set
constitutes the rst-level data from which meta-knowledge is
extracted. The rst two variables in the validation sets are then
input into the IE as successive FB vectors, producing a predicted
output for the remaining ve variables.
Errors are measured in the following way:
+ For the class prediction generated by the rst reasoning
method, the rate of correct classications is calculated, along
with the average number of classes that conform to the
predictions. This last value is useful for measuring the
uncertainty associated with the predictions. For wrong
classications, the average distance from the true class to the
nearest predicted class is also computed, which gives an idea
of how severely wrong predictions deviate from the true class.
Only the neutral method is tested in this paper.
+ For mean values predicted using the second group of rules,
relative and absolute errors are measured in an asymmetrical
way. Because variable NC has a high frequency of zero values,
the concept of relative error could be nonsensical. Moreover, if
the real value of this variable is small, say 5, a value of 10 is a
very good prediction, although its relative error is 100%. On the
other hand, if only absolute errors are measured, a prediction
of 20,000 units when the real value is 21,000 is also a good
approximation (its relative error is 5%). However, it produces
an absolute error of 1000 units, which could disturb the
average errors when small values are also taken into
consideration. For these reasons, a fuzzy set is dened over
the range of dependent variables to assess whether or not a
value is large enough to make a relative error measure
meaningful. This means that for small values, only absolute
errors are computed, while only relative errors are calculated
for large values. This fuzzy set depends on two parameters,
denoted by b
1
ob
2
, which correspond to the largest value
J. Tinguaro Rodr guez et al. / Computers & Operations Research ] (]]]]) ]]]]]] 7
Please cite this article as: Tinguaro Rodrguez J, et al. A general methodology for data-based rule building and its application to natural
disaster management. Computers and Operation Research (2009), doi:10.1016/j.cor.2009.11.014
ARTICLE IN PRESS
which is considered not big enough and the smallest value that
is viewed as big enough. Membership degrees in this fuzzy set
for yA(b
1
; b
2
) are given by b(y) = (y b
1
)=(b
2
b
1
). Errors are
then obtained by
e =
P
v
k = 1
(1 b(y
k
))[y
k
y
k
[
v
P
v
k = 1
b(y
k
)
and Z =
P
v
k = 1
b(y
k
)[y
k
y
k
[
P
v
k = 1
y
k
b(y
k
)
;
where e represents the absolute error, Z the relative error, and
v is the size of the validation set.
+ Finally, for intervals derived by the third methodology, the rate
of correct classications is measured, along with the average
size of the intervals. If the true value of the dependent variable
lies outside the interval, the errors encountered are measured
in the same way as in the second case.
Details of the validation process are presented only for one type
of disaster (earthquakes) and for the dependent variable NC.
Because the methodology is the same for the other cases, only a
summary of the nal errors is shown.
Table 1 presents a sample of the possibilities obtained for the
classes of NC when HDI =medium and magnitude=moderate. As
stated above, the frequencies of the lower classes are much larger
than those of the other classes, leading to higher possibilities for
the lower classes. Note that these possibilities sum to o1.
Therefore, 1 max
j
1
;...;jp
I
NC
(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
) o1, meaning that some
ignorance is attributed to variable NC because the EM-DAT
sample contains missing values for that variable (which should
be taken into account when choosing the threshold d).
Table 2 presents the possibilities obtained for the dependent
variable NC for various combinations of premises. An increasing
trend from HDI =high to HDI =low and from magnitude=very low to
magnitude=high can be observed for this variable, as could be
logically expected.
Table 3 presents the fuzzy 75th percentile of the variable NC
obtained for each combination of the independent variables. The
same trend as before is observed. Also, it is interesting to note
how the presence of outliers makes the above-average values
greater than the percentiles.
Error measures for the class predictions of the variable NC are
presented in Table 4. For each value of d, the rate of correct
classications, the average size (measured in classes) of the
predictions and the average distance to the real class, when a
classication is wrong, are displayed. The errors of mean values
predicted for the same variables by the second method are
presented in Table 5, where average absolute and relative errors,
computed as explained earlier, are summarized.
Tables 68 present error and accuracy measures for the
interval prediction of NC. Table 6 presents, for each combination
Table 1
A sample of computed possibilities for classes of number of casualties when
HDI =medium and magnitude=moderate.
Number of casualties
No. casualties Very few Few Quite a lot Lot
0.377 0.234 0.177 0.091 0.054
Table 2
Weighted average values of number of casualties.
HDI Magnitude
Very low Low Moderate High
Low 2.31 30.92 217.74 1622.37
Medium 1.97 8.18 83.88 839.90
High 0.91 2.96 7.20 62.48
Table 3
Fuzzy 75th percentiles of number of casualties.
HDI Magnitude
Very low Low Moderate High
Low 7 30 126 382
Medium 7 14 46 207
High 2 10 9 20
Table 4
Error display for class predictions of NC.
d C. classif. (%) A. N. class Avg. dist.
0.20 43.48 1.00 2.07
0.35 51.60 1.46 1.73
0.40 56.53 1.64 1.66
0.50 65.72 2.02 1.49
0.60 75.02 2.50 1.38
0.65 81.66 2.78 1.24
0.70 86.72 3.08 1.12
0.75 91.64 3.37 1.13
0.80 95.56 3.71 1.90
Table 5
Parameters beta and error display for NCs mean value prediction.
Avg. abs. error Avg. rel error (%) b
1
b
2
348.6 77.72 100 1000
Table 6
Correct classications rate and average interval size for different percentile
parameters.
a
1
a
2
C. classif. (%) Avg. int. length
10 75 79.72 117.0
10 80 84.92 251.4
10 90 92.85 871.3
15 75 79.21 116.9
15 85 86.49 442.8
20 80 77.95 250.9
25 75 66.78 116.0
Table 7
Below errors for interval prediction of NC and different values of a
1
.
a
1
% Below err. Avg. abs. err. Avg. rel. err. (%)
10 0.00 0.0 0.0
15 0.51 0.4 0.0
20 7.19 1.1 0.0
25 12.88 1.4 0.0
Table 8
Above errors for interval prediction of NC and different values of a
2
.
a
2
Above err. (%) Avg. abs. err. Avg. rel. err. (%)
75 20.28 123.0 91.3
80 14.86 115.0 84.3
85 12.83 81.8 78.8
90 7.15 102.7 73.7
J. Tinguaro Rodr guez et al. / Computers & Operations Research ] (]]]]) ]]]]]] 8
Please cite this article as: Tinguaro Rodrguez J, et al. A general methodology for data-based rule building and its application to natural
disaster management. Computers and Operation Research (2009), doi:10.1016/j.cor.2009.11.014
ARTICLE IN PRESS
of percentile parameters a
1
, a
2
, the proportion of predicted
intervals which correctly classify the values of the dependent
variable and the average length of these intervals. Table 7
(respectively, Table 8) presents the proportion of intervals for
which the real value of NC lies below (above) the predicted value,
and the absolute and relative errors, in the sense of the second
method, associated with the inferior (superior) extreme of the
interval.
In the authors opinion, a good choice of class prediction
threshold is d =0:5 because this value achieves a good compro-
mise between correct classication (65% accuracy) and size or
uncertainty of predictions (size of two classes).
Similarly, according to Table 6, good choices for the percentile
parameters seem to be a
1
=15 and a
2
=75, because these values
achieve an 80% rate of correct classication with an average
interval length of 117, which is relatively small. However, as
presented in Table 8, a problem with this choice is that for 20% of
the instances, the real value of NC lies above the interval, which
amounts to underestimating the magnitude of the disaster.
Distances from the upper bound of the interval to real values of
NC are in the order of one hundred for relatively small values of
that variable (NCo500). For larger values of NC, the relative errors
can increase to as much as 90%. In this sense, a better choice of
percentile parameters might be a
1
=20 and a
2
=80, because the
lower-bound errors, although larger, are insignicant and the
upper-bound errors are somewhat reduced.
As expected, the validation results for the second group of rules
are rather poor, mainly because of the huge variability contained in
the sample for the dependent variable NC. Obviously, mean values
perform poorly as a predictor for a variable with huge variance and
very far away from a normal distribution. For these reasons, further
results do not include this kind of prediction.
Despite some uncertainty that can be assumed due to the
absence of basic data and explanatory variables, class and interval
predictions are quite satisfactorily when predicting the variable
NC. The only sense in which these predictions could be considered
dubious is that they underestimate the consequences of disasters.
However, this is only natural when considering that major
disasters are very unusual events and that this fact is also
reected in the EM-DAT database. A more complete or balanced
database should make it possible to distinguish these major
disasters more effectively.
Validation results for the rest of the dependent variables and
the disaster types are presented in Tables 9 and 10. Note that, to
enable better tuning of the system, the parameters are allowed to
be different for each of the dependent variables. For instance,
because the proportion of missing values could vary from one
variable to another, a threshold d with good performance for any
one of them would not be well adapted to the rest. Furthermore,
according to Proposition 2, the algorithm which generates the
class prediction would not stop if the condition dr1
max
j
1
;...;jp
I
Y
(j
1
; . . . ; j
p
) were not fullled by some of the variables.
The same applies for the percentile parameters a
1
; a
2
. Moreover,
because the scale varies for each variable, the parameters b
1
; b
2
should also be varied to adapt to each variables sensitivity.
Although class forecasting performs more accurately in some
cases, these tables presents that, in general, interval predictions
have better results. Their proportion of correct classications is
never o60%. Moreover, for many cases, the average interval
length is small enough to outrank class predictions, which in turn
normally have a size of at least two classes. Nevertheless, the
most important reason to prefer interval forecasts is the
following: they adapt better to samples with modes, high
variability, and few independent variables. For instance, if a
variable has a sharp mode in one class, say, with 50% of instances,
then the class predictions will be irremediably biased towards
this mode class. However, 50% of cases lie outside the mode class,
and the only way to capture this variability is by using a large
enough value of d and predictions with a relatively large size.
Moreover, class predictions must be constructed based on that
maximum possibility category, and as a result, classes far away
from that category are rarely predicted.
On the other hand, if this mode lies on an extreme of a
variables range, one of the percentiles is normally close enough to
it, and therefore the mode should lie inside the interval. The high
variability of the remaining 50% of the sample is then addressed
by the other percentile. If the mode is located in the center of the
range, this is not a problem for interval prediction. Finally, one
more advantage of interval forecasts is their ability to reect a
samples variability and therefore to provide a measure of the
uncertainty contained in historical data. Although large interval
sizes could be seen as undesirable, they are also the logical
consequence of samples with very large variances.
Thus it has been shown that, among the three inference
methods described in the last section, the one based on intervals
responds best to the various difculties present in the EM-DAT
sample. On average, the interval-based method successfully
classies more than two out of three instances of the validation
Table 9
Error display for class predictions.
Disaster Casualties Injured Homeless Affected Damage $
d % C.C. Size d % C.C. Size d % C.C. Size d % C.C. Size d % C.C. Size
Earthquake 0.50 65.72 2.02 0.50 76.90 1.30 0.35 73.83 2.05 0.40 76.56 2.33 0.30 66.95 1.93
Flood 0.50 59.68 1.97 0.35 70.66 1.73 0.35 54.96 2.52 0.40 61.77 1.64 0.30 63.64 1.59
Wind storm 0.50 69.75 2.08 0.30 55.03 2.04 0.30 61.39 2.44 0.35 56.93 1.93 0.25 60.48 1.74
Table 10
Error display for interval predictions.
Disaster Casualties Injured Homeless Affected Damage$
a
1
a
2
% C.C Lgth. a
1
a
2
% C.C Lgth. a
1
a
2
% C.C Lgth. a
1
a
2
% C.C Lgth. a
1
a
2
% C.C Lgth.
Earthquake 20 80 78.0 251 20 80 63.2 1094 35 75 73.3 23402 15 75 62.7 62672 15 75 60.4 926248
Flood 10 75 74.0 191 25 75 76.3 693 23 75 71.0 106173 10 80 67.9 5116463 10 75 62.2 1130942
Wind storm 10 75 74.7 88 15 80 77.4 473 30 75 70.3 44992 10 75 71.7 445831 10 80 65.4 849605
J. Tinguaro Rodr guez et al. / Computers & Operations Research ] (]]]]) ]]]]]] 9
Please cite this article as: Tinguaro Rodrguez J, et al. A general methodology for data-based rule building and its application to natural
disaster management. Computers and Operation Research (2009), doi:10.1016/j.cor.2009.11.014
ARTICLE IN PRESS
set and provides an idea of the level of uncertainty present in the
sample. Class predictions, although showing good performance in
many cases, do not perform as well as interval-based methods.
Finally, forecasts based on mean values perform poorly.
4.2. A case study
This section presents a case study which provides a better
picture of SEDDs operation. The recent tragic earthquake in
LAquila, Italy, will be taken as an example. LAquila is a small city
(approximately 75,000 inhabitants), which is the capital of the
region of Abruzzo, in the center of Italy. In the night of April 6,
2009, the city was struck by an earthquake of magnitude 6.3,
resulting in 294 deaths, 1500 injuries, and 40,000 homeless. Let us
also recall that Italy is a highly developed country to which the
United Nations Development Program (UNDP) statistics assign an
HDI of 0.945 out of 1 (2008 data).
Following the methodology described at the beginning of this
section, HDI and magnitude information is used to forecast the
number of casualties, injured people, and affected people. The
classes for these variables are the same as before, but in this case,
the entire EM-DAT sample will be used to build the rules. The
parameters also have the same values as presented in Table 10.
The forecasts obtained are presented in Table 11.
These results are quite poor: as already happened in the
validation process, the predicted mean values are very far away
from the real ones. Moreover, the class predictions fail for all
variables, and the interval forecasts are correct only for the
number of injured people, being far away from the real values for
the remaining variables. In summary, the performance obtained is
much poorer than that observed in the validation process. How
can this be?
In the authors opinion, one main problem is the value of the
HDI variable. Recall that this variable provides a measure of the
vulnerability of a country, but it is of course true that local
conditions and therefore local vulnerability can differ widely
from the national average. This is a strong argument for including
more independent variables in the EM-DAT dataset, particularly
those which would make it possible to assess local vulnerability.
In this sense, let us recall that many Italian experts criticized the
quality of the buildings which were destroyed by the earthquake
(see for instance [34]). It seems that many of these buildings
were built without taking into account the current laws and
regulations of the country. This information could be taken to
suggest that the local HDI of the affected zone (LAquila in this
case) is lower than the national average. In any case, it is clear
(at least from the facts) that local vulnerability was in fact
relatively high.
Taking into account these considerations, it seems appropriate
to repeat the case study with a corrected HDI value. It was
decided to assign this variable a value of 0.8, which constitutes
the limit between what the United Nations calls medium and high
levels of human development. That is, the new value is
signicantly lower than the original value, but still high enough
to be considered realistic for a developed country such as Italy.
Results obtained using this corrected values are presented in
Table 12.
Now the interval predictions have improved, correctly includ-
ing the real value for two of the three variables and being only
slightly off for the remaining one. Although the predicted classes
do not include the real ones, the distance to them is smaller than
before. Moreover, for the injured variable, the possibilities
obtained were ^ p
H
= (22:69; 32:98; 15:77; 8:08; 3:80), and thus class
4 would have been predicted by using the pessimistic rule (see
Section 3.3) because d =0:5 for this variable. Anyway, as already
stated, the class predictions are biased towards the mode class,
which usually is the lowest one, and this case study is no
exception. Further work will be required to develop methods to
correct unbalanced samples as in the case of EM-DAT.
Interval predictions appear best suited to the challenge of
modeling the EM-DAT database and using it for learning and
inference tasks. Once again, some underestimation is present in
the predictions as a consequence of the samples lack of balance.
Finally, more independent variables would be useful to distin-
guish local features of the place affected by a disaster.
5. Conclusions
Humanitarian NGOs play a key role in current emergency
response, especially in many developing countries where avail-
able resources or policies make it impossible for local organiza-
tions to attend to disasters properly and international
humanitarian aid is therefore required. Moreover, disaster
mitigation and risk management are issues whose importance
goes beyond humanitarian action. Therefore, the problem dis-
cussed in this paper is crucial in natural-hazard management,
addressing a gap that some NGOs claim exists. Standard existing
DSS have been criticized because of their unrealistic complexity.
In this paper, on one hand, the authors emphasize the need to
develop decision support tools specically to address this
problem, and on the other hand, they show that it is possible to
design such a practical decision support tool so that it can be
implemented in contexts such as developing countries or NGOs.
In particular, a DSS-DM data-based rule-building methodology
has been presented here, which enables damage assessment for
multiple disaster scenarios to be generated from available
information about the case under study, taking into account
historical disaster data and knowledge. Although the system is
still a prototype, validation results suggest the suitability of the
approach developed in this work.
Future research within the SEDD project will involve, among
other things, heuristics for reducing the number of rules which
need to be built (by means of fuzzy categorical clustering, for
example; see [5]), the introduction of a fuzzy bipolar approach (in
the sense of [21]) to model arguments for and against a certain
classication, and an extended reasoning methodology which
should take into account relations between dependent variables
(see, e.g., [18]). Additional effort should also be devoted to enlarge
the knowledge base by adding more premises and dependent
variables, to analyze the robustness of the system with respect to
Table 11
Real and forecast values for the case of the LAquila earthquake.
Variable Real
value
Real
class
Predicted
value
Predicted
class
Predicted
interval
Casualties 294 3 10 1 [0,51]
Injured 1500 4 303 12 [8,2060]
Homeless 40000 4 2683 12 [0,27601]
Table 12
Real and forecast values for the case of the LAquila earthquake with corrected HDI.
Variable Real
value
Real
class
Predicted
value
Predicted
class
Predicted
interval
Casualties 294 3 81 12 [0,283]
Injured 1500 4 368 12 [33,1880]
Homeless 40000 4 15225 13 [0,65256]
J. Tinguaro Rodr guez et al. / Computers & Operations Research ] (]]]]) ]]]]]] 10
Please cite this article as: Tinguaro Rodrguez J, et al. A general methodology for data-based rule building and its application to natural
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ARTICLE IN PRESS
class denition, and to estimate the required resources. Moreover,
in order to provide a better treatment of information uncertainty,
it will be necessary to introduce, together with fuzzy uncertainty
measures, complementary probabilistic measures, and to imple-
ment in both frameworks the spatial aggregation operators
described in [2,3,33].
Acknowledgments
This research has been partially supported by Grants TIN2009-
07901, CCGO7-UCM/ESP-2576, and I-Math Consolider C3-0132.
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Please cite this article as: Tinguaro Rodrguez J, et al. A general methodology for data-based rule building and its application to natural
disaster management. Computers and Operation Research (2009), doi:10.1016/j.cor.2009.11.014