Geographic Objects with Indeterminate Boundaries

Current geographical information systems GIS deal almost exclusively with well-defined, static geographical objects ranging from physical landscapes to towns and transport systems. Such objects, exactly located in space, can easily be handled by modern GIS, yet form only a small proportion of all the possible geographical objects.; This book challenges the assumption that the world is compsed of exactly defined and bounded geographic objects such as land parcels, rivers and countries. ignoring the essential complexity of the world, current GIS do not adequately address problems as diverse as the resolution of crime between national boundaries, or the interpretation of views of people from different cultures. This work, bringing together a range of specialists from fields such as linguistics, computer science, land surveying, cartography and soil science, examines current research into the challenges of dealing with geographical phenomena that cannot easily be forced into one of the two current standard data models.

Series Editors' Preface, Editors' Preface, Contributors, European Science Foundation, Part One: Introduction by the Editors, Part Two: Objects versus Fields: Contrast in Concepts, Part Three: Languages to Describe Shape, Part Four: Qualitative Topological Relations and Indeterminate Boundaries, Part Five: Data Models for Indeterminate Objects and Fields, Part Six: Practical Issues of Dealing with Objects with Indeterminate Boundaries, Part Seven: Postscript, Index

Professor Peter A. Burrough and Andrew U. Frank