Bayes Theory and its Application to Environmental Impact Assessment

Environmental impact assessment (EIA) is one of the effective methods of environmental protection. The new methods of assessing the impacts of developments are much needed and useful to improve the environmental status in Iran. Nowadays, many researchers are using new methods in impact assessment. Bayesian network is one of the artificial intelligence methods and is used because of its simplicity and potential to consider uncertainty in data and include expert judgment when data is lacking. Bayesian network is a direct graphical model that uses conditional probability to determine the relationships between nodes, the environmental components and project’s activities. Bayesian network is useful for interdisciplinary sciences and uncertainty is high. We suggest this method is appropriate for decision making in natural resources and environment sciences.