Classification of higher order topographic objects on digital terrain data

The development of land information systems for organizing terrain information for use in classification and simulation modelling is becoming an important concern of environment and resource management. We present a methodology for handling terrain as complex entities which are higher order geographic objects. This paper focuses on the conceptual design of a system for organizing the terrain into higher order objects using a logic-based approach augmented with inexact reasoning. System development progresses from the conceptualization of a set of geomorphic objects in the real-world, to the formal representation of this world-view in a knowledge-based system. We adopt a logic programming approach to knowledge representation of terrain objects. Incompleteness and ambiguity are handled using inexact reasoning.