An agent system for managing uncertainty in the integration of spatio-environmental data

Abstract

Recent applications in environmental systems have necessitated the integration of data from multiple, heterogeneous sources. The integration process involves challenges related to issues of uncertainty and imprecision associated with both the data and the process itself. While the handling of uncertainty in geographical information systems (GIS) has been a focal point of research in recent years, the additional challenges of dealing with multiple data sources and types, as well as specific fields of analysis, lead to much more complex situations. In this paper, we present a framework for the use of fuzzy mobile agents to address these additional challenges from the standpoint of large-scale environmental systems.