Contributions to an aggregated environmental pollution index

Due to increasing global problems-recognized as climate change, environmental pollution, and population growth-technology assessment could have a very important role in order to find sustainable future solutions. For several years, interest in TA has globally increased as a possible method of solving problems concerning the sustainable development of regions and countries. Performing TA studies means trying to model the interactions between technical systems and their system environment. A difficult problem is given by the appearance of complex and highly aggregated entities in the modeling process. Various methods are used in TA, based on natural, social, economical and ecological sciences. To consider especially the environmental impacts of technical systems on air and water, an aggregated air and water pollution index (AWPI) is presented. This is only possible when the environment is considered as a system, and the two components (air and water) as subsystems with a certain pregnancy in the whole system. The aggregation problem of the two subsystems are treated using two methods based on fuzzy logic and on linguistic interpretation. This method is applied to certain regions in Romania and Germany. Results enable a comparison between different regions relative to air and water pollution. It is one of the aims of this index to point out regions with significant problems concerning air and water pollution.