The Usefulness of the GIS—Fuzzy Set Approach in Evaluating the Urban Residential Environment

The authors' focus was to determine the usefulness of the fuzzy set approach in evaluating the urban residential environment, compared with the crisp (or Boolean) approach. Particular emphasis was placed upon the comparison of evaluation results produced by the two methods within a geographic information system (GIS). This comparison highlighted the advantages of the GIS-fuzzy set approach as follows. First, it was revealed that the fuzzy set approach could reduce excessive abstraction or exaggeration in environmental phenomena. Hence, without the loss of valuable information, more accurate decisionmaking can be rendered. Second, by integrating membership functions into GIS, greater efficiency of the entire evaluation process was achieved.

[1]  H. Türkoğlu.  Residents' satisfaction of housing environments: the case of Istanbul, Turkey , 1997 .

[2]  Kwong-Sak Leung,et al.  An Intelligent Expert System Shell for Knowledge-Based Geographical Information Systems: 1. The Tools , 1993, Int. J. Geogr. Inf. Sci..

[3]  Jacek Andrzej Urbanski.  The use of fuzzy sets in the evaluation of the environment of coastal waters , 1999, Int. J. Geogr. Inf. Sci..

[4]  Raghbir Singh Sandhu,et al.  Intelligent spatial decision support systems , 1998 .

[5]  P. Burrough,et al.  FUZZY CLASSIFICATION METHODS FOR DETERMINING LAND SUITABILITY FROM SOIL PROFILE OBSERVATIONS AND TOPOGRAPHY , 1992 .

[6]  H. D. Block.  Analysis of perceptions , 1961, IRE-AIEE-ACM '61 (Western).

[7]  Reza Banai,et al.  Fuzziness in Geographical Information Systems: Contributions from the Analytic Hierarchy Process , 1993, Int. J. Geogr. Inf. Sci..

[8]  David Altman,et al.  Fuzzy Set Theoretic Approaches for Handling Imprecision in Spatial Analysis , 1994, Int. J. Geogr. Inf. Sci..

[9]  Fangju Wang,et al.  Fuzzy information representation and processing in conventional GIS software: database design and application , 1990, Int. J. Geogr. Inf. Sci..

[10]  P. Burrough,et al.  Geographic Objects with Indeterminate Boundaries , 1996 .

[11]  Trevor J. Davis,et al.  Modelling Uncertainty in Natural Resource Analysis Using Fuzzy Sets and Monte Carlo Simulation: Slope Stability Prediction , 1997, Int. J. Geogr. Inf. Sci..

[12]  D. A. Davidson,et al.  A Land Evaluation Project in Greece Using GIS and Based on Boolean and Fuzzy Set Methodologies , 1996, Int. J. Geogr. Inf. Sci..

[13]  Lotfi A. Zadeh,et al.  Fuzzy Sets , 1996, Inf. Control..

[14]  Martin Hoesli,et al.  An Analysis of Perceptions Concerning the Environmental Quality of Housing in Geneva , 1997 .

[15]  Fangju Wang,et al.  Comparison of Boolean and Fuzzy Classification Methods in Land Suitability Analysis by Using Geographical Information Systems , 1992 .