Toward Comparing Maps as Spatial Processes

Abstract

We are concerned with comparing two or more categorical maps. This type of task frequently occurs in remote sensing, in geographical informa- tion analysis and in landscape ecology, but it is also an emerging topic in medical image analysis. Existing approaches are mostly pattern-based and focus on composition, with little or no consideration of configuration. Based on a web-survey and a workshop, we identified some key strategies to handle local and hierarchical comparisons and developed algorithms which include significance tests. We attempt to fully integrate map com- parison in a process-based inferential framework, where the critical ques- tions are: (1) Could the observed differences have arisen purely by chance? and/or (2) Could the observed maps have been generated by the same process?