A QUALITATIVE CROSS-IMPACT APPROACH TO FIND THE KEY TECHNOLOGY

This article presents a qualitative analysis method based on fuzzy rel ations for a cross-impact model designed for a technology impact asses sment. The cross-impact knowledge is often uncertain or fuzzy when dea ling with future events. Assessing the cross-impact relationships amon g future technologies creates a more uncertain or fuzzy situation beca use of the time and the uncertainty involved in evaluating future tech nologies. In addition, experts prefer to use Linguistic terms or fuzzy values in their predictions. Thus a cross-impact matrix is represente d as fuzzy relations on causal concepts. We therefore develop inferenc e algorithms based on fuzzy relations and show a simple technology ass essment example to illustrate this approach. This approach is useful i n finding the key technology because it considers not only the direct impact but also the indirect impact. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Inc.