Optimized Evolving Fuzzy Inference System for Humidity Forecasting in Greenhouse Under Extreme Weather Conditions

Precision agriculture has increasingly adopted controlled agricultural microclimates, particularly smart greenhouses, as a strategy to enhance crop yields while maintaining environmental conditions within suitable ranges for each crop. Among the variables that govern the water balance in these systems, air humidity plays a critical role; therefore, accurate humidity forecasting is essential for implementing timely control actions that support productivity levels. However, greenhouse conditions are frequently perturbed by extreme weather events, which lead to nonlinear and non-stationary humidity dynamics. In this context, the aim of this study was to design an optimized evolving fuzzy inference system for humidity forecasting that can adapt to changing and unforeseen situations in agricultural microclimates. A prototyping-based methodology was followed, including phases of communication, quick planning, modeling and quick design, construction of the prototype, and deployment. A hybrid genetic algorithm was used to optimize the parameters of an evolving Mamdani-type fuzzy inference system, extended to handle missing values in online data streams. Thirty independent optimization runs were performed, and the best configuration achieved a mean squared error of 1.20 × 10−2 in humidity forecasting using one minute of data for three months. The resulting model showed high interpretability, with an average number of 1.35 rules, tolerance for missing values, imputing 2% of the data, and robustness to sudden changes in the data stream with a p-value of 0.01 for the Augmented Dickey–Fuller test at alpha = 0.05. In general, the optimized evolving fuzzy inference system obtained an effectiveness rate greater than 90% and demonstrated adaptability to extreme weather conditions, suggesting its applicability to other phenomena with similar characteristics.