The Potential of Fuzzy Logic for Quantitative Land Cover Change Analysis Basing on Historical Topographic Maps

This paper describes an approach that allows to reduce error propagation when comparing historical topographic maps. By linking the fuzzy set theory with simple map algebra and Kappa statistics, the uncertainty resulting from dissimilar quality of the maps can at least be partly eliminated and a distinction between ‘true’ and ‘false’ land cover changes can be made.