Handling Temporal Uncertainty in Gis Domain: a Fuzzy Approach

This paper is an attempt to introduce a new framework to handle both uncertainty and time in spatial domain. The application of the fuzzy temporal constraint network (FTCN) method is proposed for representation and reasoning of uncertain temporal data. A brief introduction of the fuzzy sets theory is followed by description of the FTCN method with its main algorithms. The paper then discusses the issues of incorporating fuzzy approach into current sptio-temporal processing framework. The general temporal data model is extended to accommodate uncertainties with temporal data and relationships among events. A theoretical FTCN process of fuzzy transition for the imprecise information is introduced with an example. A summary of the paper is given together with outlining some contributions of the paper and future research directions.