• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.243-255
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• 2003

The mathematical models for GIS-based spatial data integration have been developed for geological applications such as mineral potential mapping or landslide susceptibility analysis. Among various models, the effectiveness of fuzzy logic based integration of multiple sets of geological data is investigated and discussed. Unlike a traditional target-driven fuzzy integration approach, we propose a data-driven approach that is derived from statistical relationships between the integration target and related spatial geological data. The proposed approach consists of four analytical steps; data representation, fuzzy combination, defuzzification and validation. For data representation, the fuzzy membership functions based on the likelihood ratio functions are proposed. To integrate them, the fuzzy inference network is designed that can combine a variety of different fuzzy operators. Defuzzification is carried out to effectively visualize the relative possibility levels from the integrated results. Finally, a validation approach based on the spatial partitioning of integration targets is proposed to quantitatively compare various fuzzy integration maps and obtain a meaningful interpretation with respect to future events. The effectiveness and some suggestions of the schemes proposed here are illustrated by describing a case study for landslide susceptibility analysis. The case study demonstrates that the proposed schemes can effectively identify areas that are susceptible to landslides and ${\gamma}$ operator shows the better prediction power than the results using max and min operators from the validation procedure.