Soft Systems: Analysis of Ecosystems

This work reflects a response to the pressing need for both scientific and social concern for the rapid rate of environment deterioration globally caused by humans. It describes the kind of parsimonious models required to minimize unnecessary exposure to risk for marine populations and other factors that impact negatively on the environment. The use of computational neural networks namely Kohonen's self-organising maps, as a base technology for modelling environmental influence factors is refined for this complex domain dependent investigation. This leads to a stepwise refinement of data attribute dependencies, which in turn identifies the principal points of failure in an eco system and thus, illustrates the areas for conservation. Dr Shanmuganathan's work and results have been published in different contexts but this monograph describes in detail the methodology and research activities that led to the successful production of her doctoral thesis. I was delighted to supervise Dr Shanmuganathan's PhD research and now am extremely pleased her work is being recognized in the publication of this book. Philip J. Sallis, Professor in Computer Science