Integrating fuzzy logic and gis analysis to assess sediment characterization within a confined harbour

Characterization of marine sediments in areas heavily impacted by human activities is a good example for situations where high complexity of physical and chemical processes can lead to an incomplete understanding of the configuration and distribution of pollutants material. These processes are often very complex for a direct prediction from a mathematical theory, making necessary that the process of identifying areas of contaminated sediment is mainly based on defined empirical models of concentrations distribution. In this paper an ontological fuzzy approach in GIS serves as a framework to define a specific scenario grounded on the abilities from an existing dataset. The final model is based on a large number of known concentrations (samples for characterization), which are considered sufficiently similar in terms of features. Therefore the model is working as guides (description of the model) for the identification of areas of same type. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.