Where is FCM usefull?
Özesmi and Özesmi (2004) identified 4 cases where FCM is especially suitable:
- Cases where hard to quantify human behavior plays a significant role.
- Cases where hard scientific data is incomplete or entirely missing, but where local, indigenous and traditional knowledge is available.
- For very complex questions where many different positions are included but where no simple or correct answers are available. In such cases finding compromises is often the only solution.
- Cases where public opinion is desired. FCM also improves the flow of information between the participants.
Out of our own experience we can say that FCM is very useful as a tool:
- to gather information on the perception of actors – e.g. to build an agent based model
- to generate realistic and relevant scenarios
- for participative modelling
- in comparing different views on the functioning of complex systems
- to foster social learning
- to integrate or compare different knowledge types (e.g. expert knowledge, local knowledge, traditional knowledge)
- for holistic socio-ecological system analysis
