Gianni Bellocchi - Model and Method Validation

Model and Method Validation

Bellocchi's work in validation has had implications for model and analytical method assessment. Genuine insights in model results, as well as results from an analytical method, imply concomitant understandings of multiple aspects of quality assessment to be taken into account and formalized. The fuzzy set theory formalized by Professor Lofti Zadeh at the University of California in 1965 was pointed out as having a direct use to assess numerical outcomes for its ability to aggregate multiple, possibly contradictory, evaluation measures. Many of the more basic principles of this theory are now generally accepted in many areas. Its application in a context of validation opened up to a new way to investigate results from a modelling process or an analytical method. In 2001, Bellocchi and co-workers firstly introduced the possibility to use fuzzy logic to evaluate model estimates at the Second International Symposium on Modelling Cropping Systems (Florence, Italy), and in 2002 the same approach was internationally acknowledged (Agronomy Journal, volume 94, pages 1222–1233). Further extensions and applications followed (as reported in Authorship).