A hybrid fuzzy cognitive model based on weighted OWA operators and single‐antecedent rules

Conventional fuzzy cognitive maps (FCMs) can only represent monotonic or symmetric causal relationships and cannot simulate the AND/OR combinations of the antecedent nodes. The rule‐based fuzzy cognitive maps (RBFCMs) usually suffer from the well‐known combinatorial rule explosion problem. A hybrid fuzzy cognitive model based on weighted OWA operators and single‐antecedent rules is proposed to eliminate the drawbacks of the existing FCM models. Hybrid fuzzy cognitive maps (HFCMs) represent the causal relationships with single‐antecedent fuzzy rules and handle the various AND/OR relationships among the antecedent nodes with weighted OWA aggregation operators. Compared with conventional FCMs, HFCMs have more powerful cognitive capability. Compared with RBFCMs, HFCMs reduce the scale and complexity of the rule bases significantly and have better representation and inference performance. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Int Syst 22: 1189–1196, 2007.