A Fuzzy Entropy-Based Thematic Classification Method Aimed at Improving the Reliability of Thematic Maps in GIS Environments

Thematic maps of spatial data are constructed by using standard thematic classification methods that do not allow management of the uncertainty of classification and, consequently, eval uation of the reliability of the resulting thematic map. We propose a novel fuzzy-based thematic classification method applied to construct thematic maps in Geographical Information Systems. An initial fuzzy partition of the domain of the features of the spatial dataset is constructed using triangular fuzzy numbers; our method finds an optimal fuzzy partition evaluating the fuzziness of the fuzzy sets by using a fuzzy entropy measure. An assessment of the reliability of the final thematic map is performed according to the fuzziness of the fuzzy sets. We implement our method on a GIS framework, testing it on various vector and image spatial datasets. The results of these tests confirm that our thematic classification method provide thematic maps with a higher reliability with respect to that obtained through fuzzy partitions constructed by expert users.