Knowledge Discovery from Area–Class Resource Maps: Capturing Prototype Effects
Qi Feng, A‐Xing Zhu, Tao Pei, Cheng‐Zhi Qin, James E. Burt · Cartography and Geographic Information Science · 2008
This paper presents a knowledge discovery approach to extracting knowledge from area–class resource maps. Prototype theory forms the basis of the approach which consists of two major components: (1) a scheme for organizing knowledge used in categorizing geographic entities which allows for the modeling of indeterminate boundaries and non–uniform memberships within categories; and (2) a data mining method using the Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm for extracting such knowledge from area–class maps. A case study on knowledge discovery from a soil map demonstrates the details of the approach. The study shows that knowledge for classifying geographic entities with indeterminate boundaries is embedded in area–class maps and can be extracted through data mining; and that continuous spatial variation of geographic entities can be better modeled if the knowledge discovery process retains knowledge of within-class variations as well as transitions between classes.