Fuzzy modeling and analytic hierarchy processing-means to quantify risk levels associated with occupational injuries. II. The development of a fuzzy rule-based model for the prediction of injury

This paper presents the second phase in a two-part research project to develop a fuzzy rule-based expert system for predicting occupational injuries of the forearm and hand. Analytic hierarchy processing (AHP) is used to assign relative weights to the identified risk factors. A fuzzy rule base is constructed with all of the potential combinations for the given factors. The input parameters are linguistic variables obtained in the first part of the research. These inputs are fuzzified and defuzzified to provide two system outputs: a linguistic value and a numeric value as a prediction of injury. The system provides linguistic risk levels as well as quantified risks in assessing the overall risk of injury. The system evaluation was conducted resulting in calculations for Type I and Type II errors. The contributions and limitations of the system are discussed