Qualitative topological relations between interval type‐2 fuzzy spatial objects

Abstract The topological relations between fuzzy objects are crucial in geographical spatial analysis. A qualitative topological relationship analysis method for interval type‐2 fuzzy spatial objects (IT2 FSOs) is proposed in this article. Similarities between the interval type‐2 fuzzy topological relation matrices and the corresponding crisp topological relation matrices are calculated using Jaccard's similarity measure and sorted to identify the two major relations. Next, the proximity degrees and quantifiers that correspond to these two major relations can be determined. Thus, two methods can be used to describe the relation between two IT2 FSOs; the method proposed in this article conforms to human cognitive habits and meets the requirements of a variety of applications in geographical information systems (GIS). Users can select different boundary definitions, intersection matrix types, and calculation functions for each cell in the intersection matrix, as well as different description methods according to the requirements of different GIS applications.