1. ENVIRONMENTAL RISK
ASSESSMENT OF
GENETICALLY MODIFIED
ORGANISMS
F. Camastra, A. Ciaramella, V. Giovannelli, M.
Lener, V. Rastelli, A. Staiano, G. Staiano, A.
Starace
WIRN 2013 - XXIII Italian Workshop on Neural Networks
Vietri sul Mare, Salerno, ItalyMay 23rd 2013

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Contents
 Introduction
 Environmental Risk Assessment (ERA)
 Fuzzy Decision Support System
 System Validation
 Conclusions and Future Works

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Introduction
 Genetically Modified Organism (GMO)
 organism altered using genetic engineering
techniques
 ADVANTAGES
 GM Crop plant
 resistant to herbicide, pests, diseases or
environmental conditions
 with improved nutritional or pharmaceutical properties

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BUT …
 Risks that might impact on:
 Consumers
 Man, Animals (e.g., butterflies)
 Natural environment
 Natural habitats, Soil
 European directives assess and manage GMO
risks
 The notifier, i.e., the person who requests the
GMO release, must perform an ERA

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Environmental Risk
Assessment (ERA)
1. Preliminary identification of risks
 available scientific database and literature
2. Effects on non-target species
 BT toxin and butterflies
3. Effects on natural environment
 Compatible wild plants
4. Management of the risk
 mitigation measures

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The Conceptual Model

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Overview of ERA process

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System architecture

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The Electronic Questionnaire
 As a web application
 Different kinds of questions:
 Textual
 Numerical
 Date
 Linguistic
 Multiple choice

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Textual question

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Numerical question

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Date question

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Linguistic question

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Multiple choice question

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The Fuzzy Decision Support
System
(FDSS)

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Fuzzifier

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Fuzzy rule base
IF vegetative cycle duration IS
High
AND cultural cycle duration IS
Low
THEN phenological risk IS Low

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Inference engine
IF vegetative cycle duration IS
High
AND cultural cycle duration IS
Low
THEN phenological risk IS Low
IF vegetative cycle duration IS
High
AND cultural cycle duration IS
High
THEN phenological risk IS High
…

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Defuzzifier
IF vegetative cycle duration IS
High
AND cultural cycle duration IS
Low
THEN phenological risk IS Low
IF vegetative cycle duration IS
High
AND cultural cycle duration IS
High
THEN phenological risk IS High
…

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Report

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 Open source library
 http://jfuzzylogic.sourceforge.net/html/index.html
 Fuzzy Control Language (FCL)
specification
 Aggregation, Activation and Accumulation
methods
 Supports continue, discrete or custom
membership functions
 Flexible and extensible FDSS
jFuzzyLogic

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System validation
 The Fuzzy Decision Support System has been
tested
 by producing about 150 ERAs
 by submitting the produced inferences to a pool of
ISPRA experts
 not involved in the rule definition
 to assess the consistency and completeness of
the system

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Scenario 1

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Scenario 2

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Conclusions and Future Works
 Fuzzy Decision Support System
 identify potential impacts that can achieve one
or more receptors through a set of migration
paths
 validated on Bt-maize1 and Brassica napus2
by the human experts of ISPRA
 Future works
 Machine learning algorithms to learn the
FDSS knowledge base1 GM maize
2 GM colza