A fuzzy approach for the expression of uncertainty in measurement

This paper deals with a fuzzy expression of uncertainty in measurement. The fuzzy approach proposed consists of representing measurements by a family of intervals of confidence stacked atop one another, that in fact define the upper bound of the probability distributions consistent with these intervals of confidence. This approach is compatible with the ISO Guide for the expression of uncertainty in measurement, and is particularly interesting because it allows both the handling of specificity and uncertainty of measurement. Moreover, fuzzy uncertainty propagation is available thanks to fuzzy arithmetic, which is a generalization of interval analysis, yielding both worst case results and best estimates at the same time. In order to simplify the propagation, a parameterized possibility distribution approximating the optimal one is proposed and compared with the probabilistic approaches. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.