Estimating Region of Influence of a Geospatial Object using Fuzzy Reasoning

Geospatial information plays a vital role in today’s decision support system. Geospatial objects, the constituents of geospatial information, have both spatial representation and non-spatial/attribute values. These objects are represented as point, poly-line and polygon in maps. Though, the objects are crisply represented in geospatial maps, their region of influence depends on various factors and are often fuzzy. The buffer area of a geospatial object can be defined as the region up to which the object’s influence extends. The buffer area of an object depends on the parameter(s) related to its intrinsic qualities and also on other geospatial object. For example, the buffer area of a hospital depends on the type/quality of service available at the hospital and also on other objects, like nearness to transport network etc. This paper proposes a fuzzy based approach to estimate the region of influence (buffer area) of a geospatial object. To estimate the region of influence (RoI) of an object it is necessary to determine the parameters (both internal and external) defining its influence and the level/intensity of influence of the parameters. The buffer area of an object is determined by computing the object influence of the object at a certain geographical distance. The influence of object for that region is calculated by using fuzzy reasoning. The strength of the affecting factors (i.e., parameters) is determined using fuzzy if-then rules which reflect the marginal effect of each parameter on the buffer area. An case study has also been shown to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed framework.