Development of Second Generation Expert Systems for Environmental Toxicology

EST - CP94-1029

Keywords: expert systems, environment, toxicology, certification of new chemicals

Start Date: 1 April 1995 / Duration: 36 months

Objectivies and Approach

This project will study the development of expert systems (ES) and their application to environmental toxicology. This will involve:

integration of two different ES approaches based on separate principles: the ANN approach and that based on rules,
development of reliable and validated simulation methods of pesticide degradation in the environment,
development of toxicological modules, to characterise parent compounds and transformation products.

European links: A related EU project, EV5V-CT92-0061, dealing with experimental studies on degradation of pesticides, will be considered.

Progress and Results

During the first year of the project, an integrated architecture of a system with rules to reason on the presence of possible toxic substructures and ANN to reason on the whole molecule has been defined. The fitotoxity of three classses of compounds could be computed. A set of rules recognises substructures and computes the toxicity. This set of rules has been extended by additional rules that deal with the phototransformations of more than hundred compounds. Work is in progress concerning the assessment of a framework for all toxicity data found in different data sets.

Information Dissemination Activities and/or Exploitation

Results are disseminated through published papers, by participation in international and national conferences and through partners who have connections with public health authorities. The results will integrated into a commercial system.

Coordinator

Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informazione
Politecnico di Milano
Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32
I-20133 Milano, I

EU Partners

Politecnico di Milano, I
Istituto Mario Negri, I

Non-EU Partners

CompuDrug Chemical, HU
National Institute of Chemistry, SI
National Institute of Public Health, CZ

CONTACT POINT

Prof. G. Gini
Tel: +39 2 23 99 36 26
Fax: +39 2 23 99 34 11
E-mail: gini@elet.polimi.it