Right or wrong on this website?
FCMappers is not a nerdy football club of a city called Mappers. It is basically a network analysis network, a group of people sharing their knowledge, information and thoughts about fuzzy cognitive mapping (FCM), network analysis and other related approaches. FCM is a soft-system modelling and mapping approach combining aspects of qualitative with the advantages of quantitative methods. It has a strong participative component fostering social learning between the participants. Working mainly in the field of socio-ecological research and ethno-medicine ourselves, we are very interested in discussing all sorts of application possibilities and potential links between FCM and other approaches.
Most of the information on this site is available to the public but some is restricted to registered users. Of course, you can register for free. It will give you access to more information about projects and - most important - to the software itself. The FCM tool FCMapper is - as far as we know - the only freely available Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping & Modelling software. It is based on Excel and easy to use.
If you are interested in publishing articles, links, comments or other related content on this webpage, you can apply for "author-status" by writing to us via the contact section.
What will you find on our webpage?
Please note that the site is still under construction - we hope to be able to offer you a more complete site until the end of 2011.
You will find basic information about fuzzy cognitive mapping (FCM). For example the history of this method, how it works and how FCM can fill a gap by bridging natural and social sciences. You will also read more about why FCM will be a good alternative to already well established methods or how you can use FCM for all sorts of interesting research. In the Resources section you will find articles, links and what ever other information we can get hold of connected to FCM or related methods and their applications, interesting conferences, job announcements etc..
We provide an insight into our projects for all registered users. This should be extended with the result that registered authors are able to present their projects as well. So that everyone finally can benefit and has the chance to learn from projects already successfully accomplished.
The software section is closely related to the project FCMapper. The further development of a FCMappers toolbox is one of our long-term projects. At the moment we have a working beta release of our software which is FREE for non-commercial use. In its current configuration it will help you to analyze, simulate and visualize your FCMs with the ease of a few mouse clicks. As it is based on Excel it also gives you the possibility to work in a well known environment. A JAVA based software will be available in the future. Last but not least we would appreciate if scientific layman would start using the web service FCMappers.net and our software FCMapper.
We provide tutorials to help you to get into fuzzy cognitive mapping and also for a better understanding of the background theory of FCM. At the moment we have only two video-tutorials online, but these should enable you to do the first steps with FCMapper. Our ambition is to provide you with a full range of tutorials from the basics to advanced applications of fuzzy cognitive mapping and the FCMapper.
Registered users, and we hope you will register, have the possibility to share their information about fuzzy cognitive mapping, post announcements, discuss projects, applications and other fuzzy stuff...
We hope you will find this webpage interesting and helpful and you will forward the link to as many colleagues and friends as possible.
If you need any help getting started with fuzzy cognitive mapping or if you need consultation for your project, please contact us.