Predicting energy theft under uncertainty conditions: A fuzzy cognitive maps approach: Energy theft prediction

Several studies have called the attentions of utility firms to the possibility of using mathematical models to measure and monitor energy theft. Unfortunately, these studies have decoupled the contributions of government policies, such as social, technical and economic policies, from their evaluation process. To address this knowledge gaps, this article modelled energy theft using soft computing approach: fuzzy cognitive map (FCM) and swarm algorithm. Fuzzy logic was used to design cognitive maps for energy theft parameters; second, and swarm algorithm was used to determine the weights and concepts values. The practicality of the swarm-based model was tested using experts' judgements. This model performance was compared with evolutionary-based FCM and it was observed that it performed better than the evolutionary-based model. And when the swarm-based model performance was compared with experts' judgements, it performed satisfactorily.