Fuzzy logic approach in energy security decision-making: "ESecFuzzy" software application

Abstract

The main aim of this paper is to design and test new software application to support experts involved in decision-making in the field of energy security. The prototype named ESecFuzzy is designed for this purpose. It implements various fuzzy concepts (fuzzy rules, fuzzified input data, fuzzy variables utilized by fuzzy terms and related fuzzy sets) chosen to obtain reasoning in case of unclear, uncertain or even incomplete input data for reaching a conclusion about them. The research was conducted on a sample of 28 European Union countries over a ten-year period (2008-2017). The research outcomes are as follows: (a) ESecFuzzy application for energy security measurement was developed; (b) application testing; (c) measuring energy security on a given sample, and (d) evaluation of the accuracy and acceptability of fuzzy logic as an approach for energy security quantification. ESecFuzzy provides the experimenting with different input data (time series intersected with geospatial data) as well as fine-tuning of fuzzy rules in knowledge base. Through the evaluation and experimenting process, ESecFuzzy application demonstrated the advantage of fuzzy logic by obtaining the derived information based on mass of heterogeneous data organized in time series that indicate general trends in the target application domain.