Error Modeling and Management for Data
365
Polygon Uncertainty Model
Uncertainty of the boundary of a polygon object in GIS may be defined as the
combination of the uncertainties of the line segments circumscribing the polygon. In
other words, the rigorous boundary uncertainty model of a polygon object is simply the
combination of all the line uncertainty indicators enclosing the polygon. It is important
to notice that the uncertainty of a polygon is different than the uncertainty of the
boundary of a polygon, since the interior of polygons can also have uncertainty.
However, the interiors of polygons are more homogeneous than the boundary of
polygons, causing the magnitude of uncertainty to be greater on the boundary than the
interior. Consequently, emphasis will be put on modeling the uncertainty of the
boundary of the polygon. Fig. 7 shows one realization of the polygon uncertainty
model.