Geographic Uncertainty in Environmental Security

On June 28 through July 1, 2006, a NATO advanced research workshop was held in Kyiv, Ukraine. This meeting of scholars from both NATO and NATO partner countries brought together the leading researchers in the field of Fuzziness and Uncertainty in GIS for Environmental Security and Protection. The papers based upon the presentations at this meeting are included in this book. They were all quite good, some focusing on the use of fuzzy sets in geography, others focusing on explicit environmental concerns in Ukraine. What this book cannot show is the camaraderie and spirit of cooperation that permeated the atmosphere of this workshop. These researchers, many of whom had never met before, are now colleagues, and are continuing to collaborate on research to this day, and probably beyond. Scholars from various positions and countries have chosen to work together in the spirit of cooperation to make the ideas presented in this book come to fruition. At press time, we do not know if Ukraine will become a NATO member or not. In any case, the editors wish to thank the NATO Science Committee for their funding, encouragement, and work in making this workshop a reality. We hope that the spirit of cooperation and intellectual curiosity that was so lively at the conference will encourage the reader in the perusal of this work.

Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Fuzziness and Uncertainty in GIS for Environmental Security and Protection, Kyiv, Ukraine, June 28-July 1, 2006.

This book features papers presented at a NATO Advanced Research Workshop, help in Kyiv, Ukraine, in July 2006. The workshop focused on how uncertainty and fuzziness can be better modeled and implemented in Geographic Information Science to help decision makers make more informed choices, especially as they pertain to environmental security and protection, and brought together top researchers from both NATO countries as well as partner countries.

Preface and acknowledgement. Resolution of Ukrainian sponsor and workshop participants1. Fuzzy regions: theory and applications; J. Verstraete et al.2. Mapping the ecotone with fuzzy sets; Ch. Arnot and P. Fisher.3. Issues and challenges of incorporating fuzzy sets inecological modeling; V.B. Robinson.4. Reliability of vegetation community information derived using decorana ordination and fuzzy c-means clustering; L. Bastin et al.5. A rough set-based approach to handling uncertainty in geographic data classification; P. Jankowski.6. Fuzzy models for handling uncertainty in the integration of high resolution remotely sensed data and GIS; J. Schiewe and M. Ehlers.7. Incompleteness, error, approximation, and uncertainty: an ontological approach to data quality; A. Frank.8. A flexible decision support approach to model ill-definedknowledge in GIS; G. Bordogna et al.9. Development of the geoinformation system of the stateecological monitoring; V.B. Mokin.10. Mapping type 2 change in fuzzy land cover; P. Fisher and Ch. Arnot.11. Indexing implementation for vague spatial regions with R tree and grid files; F.E. Petry et al.12. Association rule mining using fuzzy spatial data cubes; A. Yazici.13. Interactive objects extraction from remote sensing images; V. Bucha.14. Classification of remotely sensed data; S. Kokhan.15. Sustainability and environmental security management tools; A. Gorobets.16. Remote sensing and GIS application for environmental monitoring and accidents control in Ukraine; D.K. Mozgoviy et al.17. ProDec - emergency procedure based on fuzzy notions for catchment management; J.W. Owsinski and A. Ziólkowski.