A try for handling uncertainties in spatial data mining

Uncertainties pervade spatial data mining. This paper proposes a method of spatial data mining handling randomness and fuzziness simultaneously. First, the uncertainties in spatial data mining are presented via characteristics, spatial data, knowledge discovery and knowledge representation. Second, the aspects of the uncertainties in spatial data mining are briefed. They often appear simultaneously, but most of the existing methods cannot deal with spatial data mining with more than one uncertainty. Third, cloud model is presented to mine spatial data with both randomness and fuzziness. It may also act as an uncertainty transition between a qualitative concept and its quantitative data, which is the basis of spatial data mining in the contexts of uncertainties. Finally, a case study on landslide-monitoring data mining is given. The results show that the proposed method can well deal with randomness and fuzziness during the process of spatial data mining.