The University of Trieste, Department of Life Sciences, Trieste, Italy.

Enrico Feoli's recent research topics are mainly concerned with “Decision Support Systems for Sustainable Development Integrating Ecology and Economy”. He is particularly interested in vegetation analysis in vegetation-climate interaction and in evaluating the environmental impacts of industrial development. He introduced in ecology new methods of data analysis for measuring hierarchical diversity and hierarchical similarity. He developed a series of original computer programs for information analysis and simulation of ecological gradients, and established vegetation databases of Italy. He worked to introduce the fuzzy set theory in vegetation sciences and ecology and developed a new method for analyzing the vegetation variation based on the association concept and fuzzy set theory. In these last years, he worked on similarity theory and on the use of probabilistic similarity functions to validate vegetation classifications. He was principal or local coordinator of several international projects in Africa, China, Europe, India, and South America, funded by European Commission and cooperated with UNIDO (United Nations Industrial Development Organization) in several projects. In 1998, he got the Distinguished Statistical Ecologist Award by INTECOL (International Ecological Society). He is one of the academic members University of Trieste, Italy.