The attribute recognition model (ARM) has been widely used to make comprehensive assessment in many engineering fields, such as environment, ecology, and economy. However, large numbers of experiments indicate that the value of weight vector has no relativity to its initial value but depends on the data of Quality Standard and actual samples. In the present study, the ARM is enhanced with the technique of data driving, which means some more groups of data from the Quality Standard are selected with the uniform random method to make the calculation of weight values more rational and more scientific. This improved attribute recognition model (IARM) is applied to a real case of assessment on seawater quality. The given example shows that the IARM has the merits of being simple in principle, easy to operate, and capable of producing objective results, and is therefore of use in evaluation problems in marine environment science.
