Modeling the Vagueness of Areal Geographic Objects: A Categorization System

Abstract

Modeling vague objects with indeterminate boundaries has drawn much attention in geographic information science. Because fields and objects are two perspectives in modeling geographic phenomena, this paper investigates the characteristics of vague regions from the perspective of the field/object dichotomy. Based on the assumption that a vague object can be viewed as the conceptualization of a field, we defined five categories of vague objects: direct field-cutting objects, focal operation-based field-cutting objects, element-clustering objects, object-referenced objects, and dynamic boundary objects. We then established a categorization system to formalize the semantic differences between vague objects using the fuzzy set theory. The proposed framework provides valuable input for the conceptualization, interpretation, and modeling of vague geographical objects.