ABSTRACT
The theme of this chapter is reasoning with geospatial information under uncertainty. Uncertainty is prevalent in any information system, but this topic is even more important for GIS because geospatial information is closely linked with observations of the world, and these observations are often inherently uncertain. Before engaging directly with the topic of reasoning under uncertainty, the chapter begins with a general discussion of formal aspects of spatial reasoning. Section 9.2 then considers uncertainty in many of its guises. Then the discussion turns to some specific qualitative (section 9.3) and quantitative (section 9.4) techniques for representing and reasoning under uncertainty. Section 9.5 presents some example applications in which uncertain regions are important.
