Discovering controlling factors of geospatial variables

Efficient means of determining factors controlling spatial distribution of an environmental class variable are of significant interest in Earth science. In this paper, we present a method for automated discovery of controlling factors by mining for emerging patterns in a database constructed from the fusion of several explanatory datasets. We introduce a new definition of pattern support to account for spatial character of the data and systematically evaluate the effectiveness of our technique using a real-world application pertaining to density of vegetation cover. Experimental results show that our method can successfully identify controlling factors for the presence of high vegetation cover. Categories and Subject Descriptors I.5.2 [Pattern Recognition]: Design Methodology--Pattern analysis; I.5.4 [Pattern Recognition]: Applications-Geoscience Keywords Controlling factors, Emerging patterns, Spatial data mining

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: GIS
• Authors: Tomasz F. Stepinski, Wei Ding 0003, Christoph F. Eick
• Keywords: Database, GIS 2008, Keywords Controlling Factors, Pattern Recognition, Spatial Data Mining