This chapter reviews the basic concepts of ‘objects’ and ‘fields’ used for modelling geographic
objects and their handling using conventional discrete logic and explains how these …

The paradigm of continuous fields provides a rich foundation for spatial model-ling, particularly
when data are held in regular, square rasters (grids). Methods of Map Algebra allow …

Geographical data are used in so many aspects of our lives today, ranging from disaster
relief operations through to finding directions on our mobile phones. We can all be data …

Mandelbrot 1 has introduced the term ‘fractal’ specifically for temporal or spatial phenomena
that are continuous but not difierentiable, and that exhibit partial correlations over many …

Soil variation has often been considered to be composed of‘functional’ or ‘systematic’ variation
that can be explained, and random variation (‘noise’) that is unresolved. The distinction …

The rigid‐data model consisting of discrete, sharply bounded internally uniform entities that
is used in hierarchical and relational databases of soil profiles, choropleth soil maps and …

Initially, geographical information systems (GIS) concentrated on two issues: automated map
making, and facilitating the comparison of data on thematic maps. The first required high …

Because conventional Boolean retrieval of soil survey data and logical models for assessing
land suitability treat both spatial units and attribute value ranges as exactly specifiable …

This chapter reviews the major options available to designers of spatial sampling systems
and illustrates some of them with recent case studies carried out in Canada, the Netherlands, …

Previous attempts to devise automated methods of landscape classification have been
frustrated by computational issues related to the size of the data set and the fact that most …