Evaluating Region Inference Methods by Using
Fuzzy Spatial Inference Models
Anderson Chaves Carniel Felippe Galdino
2022 IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems (FUZZ-IEEE) | 978-1-6654-6710-0/22/$31.00 ©2022 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/FUZZ-IEEE55066.2022.9882658
Department of Computer Science Department of Meteorology
Federal University of São Carlos Federal University of Rio de Janeiro
São Carlos, SP 13565-905, Brazil Rio de Janeiro, RJ 21941-901, Brazil
Email: accarniel@ufscar.br Email: ocfgaldino@gmail.com
Abstract—Increasingly, geoscientists and spatial data scientists
have shown interest in modeling and analyzing spatial phenom-
ena characterized by the feature of spatial fuzziness. Applying
fuzzy logic and fuzzy inference methods to fuzzy spatial objects
leads to fuzzy spatial inference models. These models pursue the
goal of discovering new meaningful findings from fuzzy spatial
data, hence contributing to data knowledge discovery and sharing
this goal with spatial data science. In this paper, we introduce
a novel type of inference method called region inference; it
combines spatial query processing with fuzzy inference methods.
The objective is to capture all points that intersect a search
object (e.g., a query window) and whose output values fulfill some
specific user requirements (e.g., the points with the maximum
or minimum inferred values). For this, we propose, evaluate,
and compare query window inference methods in fuzzy spatial
inference models. In addition, we show their characterization and
applicability in real spatial applications.
Index Terms—Spatial fuzziness, fuzzy spatial inference model,
region inference, fuzzy spatial data type, spatial data science
I. I NTRODUCTION
Crisp spatial objects such as land properties and school
districts are characterized by an exact location and a precisely
defined extent, shape, and boundary in space. Spatial data
types enable the representation of crisp point, line, and region
objects and include a large variety of geometric operations
(e.g., geometric intersection, overlap, area). They form the
core components of geographical information systems (GIS),
spatial database systems (SDBS), and spatial data science
(SDS) projects. But increasingly, geoscientists and spatial
data scientists have shown interest in modeling and analyzing
spatial phenomena characterized by the feature of spatial fuzzi-
ness. It captures the inherent property of many spatial objects
in reality that have inexact locations, vague boundaries, and/or
blurred interiors, and hence cannot be adequately represented
by crisp spatial objects. Examples are air polluted areas, soil
strata, and habitats of species.
In the geoscience and GIS domains, fuzzy set theory has
become a popular tool for modeling such fuzzy spatial objects.
Fuzzy spatial data types for fuzzy points, fuzzy lines, and fuzzy
regions have been formally defined for representing them.
The central idea is to relax the strict decision of belonging
This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de
Pessoal de Nı́vel Superior - Brasil (CAPES) - Finance Code 001. Anderson
C. Carniel has been supported by the Google Research Scholar program.
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978-1-6654-6710-0/22/$31.00 ©2022 IEEE
Markus Schneider
Department of Computer & Information
Science & Engineering
University of Florida
Gainesville, FL 32611, USA
Email: mschneid@cise.ufl.edu
(value 1) or non-belonging (value 0) of a point to a spatial
object. Instead, partial belonging is allowed and expressed by
a membership degree in the interval [0, 1]. Further, multiple
belonging of a point to several spatial objects is allowed with
equal or different membership degrees.
Applying fuzzy logic [1] and fuzzy inference methods [2]
to fuzzy spatial objects leads to fuzzy spatial inference models
(FSI models). These models pursue the goal of discovering
new meaningful findings from fuzzy spatial data, hence con-
tributing to data knowledge discovery and sharing this goal
with spatial data science [3]. For each point location, an FSI
model infers an output value that represents the reasoning
conclusion of the application by employing a knowledge base
composed of fuzzy spatial objects and fuzzy rules.
This paper has four main goals. The first goal is to in-
troduce a novel type of inference called region inference
(RI). Region inference combines spatial query processing with
fuzzy inference methods. The objective is to capture all points
that intersect a given search object and whose output values
fulfill some specific user requirements (e.g., the points with
the maximum or minimum inferred values). We also identify
different types of questions that RIs can answer in applications.
A search object denotes the area of interest of a user and can
have any particular shape. In this paper, we mainly deal with
query windows. A query window is an axis-aligned rectangle
that represents an infinite set of points in the Euclidean plane.
The second goal is to provide different methods for per-
forming region inferences with query windows in fuzzy spatial
inference models. We propose two main methods for this
purpose, called the discretization method and the optimization
method. The third goal refers to the comparative analysis of
these two methods to characterize their behavior. For this, we
build a scenario based on two real datasets to evaluate different
types of RIs. The fourth goal relates to an understanding of
the applicability of the proposed methods. By using statistical
measures of the results of our comparative analysis, we
compare the methods and study their properties, similarities,
differences, and relationships. This helps us to determine and
deploy the best method to adequately answer an RI.
Section II discusses related work. Section III introduces a
running example to later illustrate our concepts of fuzzy spatial
data types, fuzzy inference on (fuzzy) spatial data, and RI
methods. Section IV sketches some basics of fuzzy inference
systems. Section V introduces some needed concepts of the
Spatial Plateau Algebra as an implementation of fuzzy spatial
data types. Section VI describes FSI models, presents different
kinds of spatial inferences, and proposes algorithms for exe-
cuting the RI methods. Section VII provides a comparative
analysis of the introduced algorithms. Finally, Section VIII
draws some conclusions and describes future work.
II. R ELATED W ORK
Several approaches propose inference models for fuzzy spa-
tial data. In this paper, we discuss the studies in [4]–[9], which
allow us to identify the main features of available approaches.
We characterize them with respect to (i) the representation
of spatial phenomena, (ii) the information employed by the
inference model, and (iii) the generality of the model.
The first characterization refers to the underlying spatial
data model employed by the approach. For instance, the work
in [6] represent spatial phenomena by using instances of crisp
spatial data types where each object is associated with a set
of alphanumerical attributes. Hence, the vagueness present
in such attributes is not explicitly stored and handled in the
internal structure of spatial objects. Other approaches employ
specific spatial data models to deal with spatial fuzziness.
In [9], the authors represent a fuzzy spatial object by using
two crisp spatial objects named kernel and conjecture. While
the kernel part contains the locations that certainly belong to
the spatial phenomenon, the conjecture part consists of the
locations that possibly belong to the spatial phenomenon. It
limits the expressiveness of spatial fuzziness. On the other
hand, the remaining approaches in [4], [5], [7] and [8] employ
fuzzy set theory to assign a value between 0 and 1 to each point
in space that indicates the degree to which a point belongs to
the possible characterizations of a spatial phenomenon.
With respect to the second characterization, the available
approaches may consider different input values in their infer-
ence models. Some approaches such as [4] and [6] make use
of alphanumerical attributes that are associated with spatial
objects or extract numerical properties from spatial objects
(e.g., area of regions). This strategy is limited since it does not
consider the vague boundaries and blurred interior of spatial
phenomena. Otherwise, the approaches in [5], [7] and [8]
employ points annotated with their corresponding membership
degrees as input of fuzzy inference systems. Hence, they
exploit the intrinsic spatial fuzziness of spatial objects in the
decision-making process. The work in [9] differs from these
approaches since it uses sensor data as input to determine the
kernel and conjecture parts of a fuzzy spatial object.
As for the third characterization, the generality of FSI
models permits their application in different scenarios and
situations. The majority of the approaches are specifically
designed for dealing with a particular context. An example
is the FSI model in [4], which is designed to analyze land
cover changes. Another example is the hierarchical system
presented in [8] that is applied to the assessment of risky issues
such as wildfires. The approaches in [5]–[7] propose tools and
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models that can be applied to different contexts. Among them,
FIFUS [7] distinguishes itself due to the formal specification
of a model that combines fuzzy inference systems and fuzzy
spatial data. Hence, it is the closest related work to this paper.
However, it has two main limitations. First, it presents an
algorithm that infers output values on point locations only.
Thus, it cannot evaluate RI queries, which are more useful
and require sophisticated algorithms to be processed. Second,
it does not conduct experiments to analyze the behavior and
properties of FSI models. This limits the understanding of the
practical applicability of FSI models.
Differently from the related work discussed, this paper intro-
duces the concept of region inferences and its variants that are
generic and can be applied to different contexts. We describe
two novel methods to evaluate RI queries on query windows
by employing fuzzy spatial objects as core components of
the underlying inference engine (e.g., Mamdani’s method). To
exhibit the applicability and usefulness of our methods in real
applications, we compare and analyze them by using a running
application built with real spatial datasets.
III. RUNNING E XAMPLE
In this paper, we extend the application in [10] based on
two real datasets that contain point objects labeled with several
alphanumerical attributes. The first one consists of the loca-
tions of Airbnb accommodations in New York City1 extracted
from April 7th to April 12th, 2021. Here, we are interested
in using the attributes related to the price and overall ratings
of accommodations. The definition of overall ratings is based
on values between 0 and 100, where a higher value implies a
better review. We have removed the observations with missing
data in these attributes from the dataset. The second dataset
refers to inspection results of restaurants in New York City
provided by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
(DOHMH)2 . Since a restaurant can be reinspected multiple
times, we are interested in considering only the most recent
graded inspection results valid on April 12th, 2021. Hence,
we have employed the R script supplied by the DOHMH2 and
excluded the lines with negative score and missing latitude and
longitude coordinates. As a result, this dataset has only scores
with values greater than or equal to 0, where a smaller score
implies a better grade.
The goal of our application is to recommend the locations
in New York City that provide great visiting experience. The
visiting experience is given by the attractiveness of staying
in a particular location based on prices and overall ratings
of accommodations and sanitary conditions of restaurants
situated near to the location. The attractiveness is given as
a value between 0 and 100, where a larger value indicates a
better visiting experience. In the rest of this paper, we illustrate
how the goal of this application can be achieved by processing
RIs on an FSI model designed for the application.
1 http://insideairbnb.com/get-the-data.html
2 https://data.cityofnewyork.us/Health/DOHMH-New-York-City-
Restaurant-Inspection-Results/43nn-pn8j
 IV. F UZZY S ETS AND F UZZY I NFERENCE S YSTEMS
In applications, fuzzy sets are labeled by linguistic values
(LVals), which characterize different instances or occurrences
of a linguistic variable (LVar) [11]. We apply this concept in
the sense that fuzzy spatial objects can also be associated with
LVals as described below.
Our running example has four attributes of interest denomi-
nated by the LVars accommodation price, accommodation re-
view, food safety, and visiting experience. The LVals of the first
three LVars are represented by fuzzy spatial objects built from
their corresponding numerical attributes (see Section V). These
objects are used as a basis to perform the recommendations.
The LVar accommodation price represents the daily price of
the accommodation and is classified as cut-rate, affordable,
and expensive. The LVals of the accommodation review are
reasonable, good, and excellent; they characterize the overall
rating of the accommodation. The LVar food safety has the
LVals low, medium, and high that classify levels of sanitary
conditions according to the scores of the sanitary inspection
results. The last LVar specifies how attractive it is to visit a
specific location. We employ the LVals awful, average, and
great to distinguish the levels of visiting experience. Since a
LVal labels a fuzzy set, we denote the membership function
of a LVal lv as µlv .
Expert knowledge in applications can be expressed by fuzzy
propositions composed of LVars and LVals [11]. A fuzzy
proposition has the format L is v where L is an LVar and v
is an LVal of the scope of L. For instance, visiting experience
is great is a fuzzy proposition for our running example. A
fuzzy rule has the format IF A THEN B where A and B
are fuzzy propositions so that A implies B. Further, A is the
antecedent and B the consequent of the rule. The antecedent
and consequent can be formed by multiple fuzzy propositions
combined by logical connectives such as AND and OR. Our
running example has five fuzzy rules to represent the cost-
benefit of staying in a location so that it expresses the visiting
experience. An example of the fuzzy rule is IF accommodation
price is cut-rate AND accommodation review is excellent AND
food safety is high THEN visiting experience is great.
A fuzzy inference system makes use of fuzzy logic to
determine output values based on a knowledge base that
consists of fuzzy sets and a fuzzy rules set. There are different
methods for determining the output value of a such system.
An example is the Mamdami’s method [2], which is employed
in this paper.
V. N EEDED C ONCEPTS OF THE S PATIAL P LATEAU
A LGEBRA
The Spatial Plateau Algebra (SPA) is an executable type
system [12]. Its spatial plateau data types, spatial plateau
operations, and spatial plateau predicates implement formally
defined fuzzy spatial data types, fuzzy spatial operations, and
fuzzy topological predicates. They are specified and imple-
mented in terms of the spatial data types, operations, and
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predicates of crisp spatial algebras for which implementations
(e.g., sf 3 ) are available.
A spatial plateau object can be a (spatial) plateau point,
plateau line, or plateau region. In this paper, only plateau
regions will be of interest. In general, a spatial plateau object is
specified by a list of pairs where each pair (called component)
consists of a crisp spatial object and a membership degree
in ]0, 1]. The crisp spatial objects of all components of a
spatial plateau object must be of the same crisp spatial data
type, have different membership degrees, and be disjoint or
adjacent to each other. The single membership degree of each
region component of a plateau region is implicitly assigned to
all interior points of that component. However, each boundary
point of a region component gets the maximum membership
degree of all region components to which it belongs. A formal
definition of the spatial plateau data types is given in [12].
While the SPA provides a large number of operations
and predicates, in this paper only one of them, namely the
function membership, is needed. Assume that point and region
are the spatial data types for crisp point and region objects
and that fregion is the spatial plateau data type for plateau
region objects. Let (i) p ∈ point, (ii) r1 , . . . , rn ∈ region
such that disjoint(ri , rj ) ∨ meet(ri , rj ) holds for i 6= j,
(iii) m1 , . . . , mn ∈ ]0, 1] with mi < mj for 1 ≤ i < j ≤ n,
and (iv) fr ∈ fregion. The Boolean functions disjoint and meet
are well known topological predicates on crisp region objects.
Intuitively, two regions are disjoint if they do not have any
point in common. They meet if only their boundaries share at
least one point. We can now describe fr with n components as
fr = h(r1 , m1 ), . . . , (rn , mn )i. Given p and fr , the function
membership yields the degree of belonging of p to fr , that is,
membership(fr , p) =


 mi if ∃ 1 ≤ i ≤ n : p inside ri

max(mi1 , . . . , mik ) if 1 ≤ k ≤ n, 1 ≤ i1 < . . . < ik ≤ n,



∀ i ∈ {i1 , . . . , ik } :

p on boundary(ri )





0 otherwise
The topological predicate inside checks if a point is located
in the interior (but not on the boundary) of a region object.
The operation boundary yields the boundary of a region object
as a line object. Finally, the operation on checks if a point is
located on a line object.
Figure 1 shows the plateau region objects for the LVar
accommodation review of our running example. In this figure,
each point has a membership degree that indicates to which
extent the point belongs to an LVal. For instance, black areas
in Figure 1b contain accommodations that have definitely
received a good review since such areas are represented by
a fuzzy region component labeled with membership degree 1
in the LVal good.
VI. F UZZY S PATIAL I NFERENCE M ODELS
FSI models make use of fuzzy spatial objects labeled
with LVals to make reasoning conclusions based on a fuzzy
3 https://cran.r-project.org/package=sf

(a) reasonable (b) good
Fig. 1. The plateau region objects for each LVal of the LVar accommodation review including New York city boundaries. The side bar depicts how membership
degrees are associated with grayscale colors.
inference method like Mamdani’s method. Similarly to FIFUS,
we use LVals of the fuzzy spatial objects in the antecedent of
a fuzzy rule. The consequent of a fuzzy rule makes use of
the LVals of the output variable of the application. The main
advantage of this strategy is that users can express the knowl-
edge about an application by using the same format of fuzzy
rules as it is employed by traditional fuzzy inference systems
(Section IV). Differently from these systems, FSI models deal
with fuzzy spatial objects in the antecedent of rules and get
spatial objects as inputs. This leads to the identification of new
types of inference queries (Section VI-A). In this paper, we
introduce a novel type of inference named region inference
(RI), which has two variants. We also propose algorithms for
implementing these variants (Sections VI-B, VI-C, and VI-D)
and conduct a comparative analysis (Section VII).
A. Types of Spatial Inference Queries
We identify the following types of spatial inference queries
that an FSI model can answer:
Point inference query: what is the inferred value for a given
single point location?
Linguistic value-based RI query: what are the points that
intersect a given search object and have inferred values that
belong to a target linguistic value?
Optimal RI query: what are the points that intersect a given
search object and have the maximum (or minimum) inferred
values?
To answer a point inference query, we consider a simple
point object as input of an FSI model. This leads to the kind
of inference discussed in [7]. The other two types of inferences
are variants of the RI. They receive a search object as input
and evaluate an RI method. In this paper, a search object is a
query window, that is, an axis-aligned rectangle that represents
an infinite set of points in the Euclidean plane. The proposal
of methods for RIs handling query windows is the main focus
of this paper. It improves the usability of an FSI model since
users can retrieve those points of interest that satisfy a given
set of constraints as stated in the queries.
Figure 2 shows examples of query windows for our running
example. For instance, the user wants to know the locations
where the visiting experience is great in the query window
depicted in Figure 2a. This request corresponds to a linguistic
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1.00
0.75
0.50
0.25
0.00
(c) excellent
(a) a query window (b) a set of six query windows
Fig. 2. Examples of query windows for our running example.
Algorithm 1: Evaluation of an FSI model by assuming a
simple point object as input.
Input: An FSI model (fsi) and a simple point object (p).
Output: A point labeled with an inferred value.
1 Function eval(fsi, p)
2 Let implication results be an empty list of membership functions
3 foreach rule in get rules(fsi) do
4 Let degrees be an empty list of numeric values
5 foreach ant in get ants(rule) do
6 add(degrees, membership(ant, p))
7 degree fulfillment ← connective method(degrees)
8 if degree fulfillment > 0 then
9 add(implication results,
implication method(get conseq(rule),
degree fulfillment))
10 result fset ← aggregation method(implication results)
11 return defuzz(result fset)
value-based RI query. Another example is to retrieve those
point locations inside a query window with the maximum
inferred value, that is, the best locations to visit. This means
that the locations have the largest membership degree in the
LVal great. This corresponds to the evaluation of an optimal
RI query. In this paper, we propose two RI methods to answer
these variants of RIs. We analyze their behavior through a
comparative analysis that employs the six query windows
shown in Figure 2b, as discussed in Section VII.
B. Evaluation of Point Inference Queries
Algorithm 1 presents the function eval, which evaluates a
point inference query (line 1). Its inputs are an FSI model (fsi)
and a crisp simple point object (p). Algorithm 1 is based on
 Algorithm 2: Evaluation of the discretization method.
Input: An FSI model (fsi), a query window (qw), an integer number (k),
and an LVal (target).
Output: A set of points, each point labeled with an inferred value.
1 center points ← centers(make grid(qw, sqrt(k), sqrt(k)))
2 Let qw inferred points be an empty list of pairs in the format (p, v)
3 foreach p in center points do
4 inferred value ← eval(fsi, p)
5 if µtarget (inferred value) > 0 then
6 add(qw inferred points, (p, inferred value))
7 return qw inferred points
Mamdani’s method (Section IV) and is employed by the other
algorithms that evaluate the RI methods.
First, Algorithm 1 defines an auxiliary list to store the
implication results of the fuzzy rules (line 2). Then, it employs
the function get rules to capture the fuzzy rules of the FSI
model. For each fuzzy rule (lines 3 to 9), it determines the
degree to which the point belongs to the fuzzy spatial object
represented by the LVal of each part of the antecedent of
the rule (lines 4 to 6). The parts of the antecedent of a rule
are captured by the function get ants. The resulting degrees
are added to a list of numeric values (line 6). This list is
used as input of the function connective method to calculate
the degree of fulfillment according to the logical connective
employed in the antecedent of the rule (line 7). Here, we
assume that only one logical connective is allowed to combine
the antecedent parts. Next, the algorithm uses the function
implication method to process the implication of the rule if
the degree of fulfillment of the rule is greater than 0 (lines 8
and 9). The implication method applies the minimum operator
to the degree of fulfillment and the membership degrees of
each domain value of the LVar of the consequent of the rule.
Consequently, it reshapes the membership function represented
by the LVal of the consequent (captured by the function
get conseq). This result is a fuzzy set and is added to an
auxiliary list. Then, Algorithm 1 applies the union between
all fuzzy sets stored in the auxiliary list (line 10). Finally, it
returns the defuzzification of the resulting union by deploying
the function defuzz (line 11).
Since Algorithm 1 executes the inference process for one
simple point object only, it does not handle query windows
with their infinitely many points. To answer the other types of
spatial inference queries, we propose the RI methods described
in Sections VI-C and VI-D. Their basic idea is to extract a
finite number of points from the query window, evaluate them
by Algorithm 1, and then decide whether the resulting points
contribute to the final answer of the question or not.
C. The Discretization Method
Algorithm 2 implements the discretization method. Its in-
puts are an FSI model (fsi), a query window (qw), an integer
number (k), and a target LVal (target) belonging to the LVar
used in the consequent part of the fuzzy rules set. The goal
is to draw the reasoning conclusion for k points distributed
on a regular grid covering qw and determine the m ≤ k
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Inferred Value
80.0
77.5
75.0
72.5
70.0
(a) regular grid (k = 100) (b) resulting points
Fig. 3. The execution of an RI query by using the discretization method.
points with inferred values belonging to the target. Hence,
the algorithm can answer linguistic value-based RI queries,
as discussed in Section VII. To this end, Algorithm 2 firstly
applies the function make grid, which is available in many
spatial libraries like sf, to tessellate the query window into a
grid of rectangles of equal size with c rows and c columns,
where c is the square root of k, and employs the function
centers to collect the centers of all squares in a list (line 1).
Then, Algorithm 2 creates an empty list of pairs where each
pair stores a point p and an inferred value v (line 2). For
each center point of a grid square (lines 3 to 6), we invoke
Algorithm 1 to compute its inferred value (line 4). Next, we
check whether the resulting inferred value has a degree greater
than 0 in the membership function represented by the target
LVal (line 5). If this is the case, we add this point and its
inferred value to the list of pairs (line 6). Finally, Algorithm 2
returns the complete list of these pairs (line 7).
Figure 3 depicts the evaluation of the discretization method
for one query window of our running example (Figure 2a). We
are interested in capturing the points whose inferred values
have some degree in the LVal great. It assumes k = 100 to
build a regular grid with 10 rows and 10 columns, as shown
in Figure 3a. For each point, the method invokes Algorithm 1
to check whether the point belongs to the final answer of the
query. The qualifying points are depicted in Figure 3b where
each point is labeled with its inferred value.
The discretization method determines all points that are la-
beled with values of some degree of membership regarding the
target LVal of the consequent of an FSI model. In this sense, if
the target LVal encompasses the maximum (minimum) domain
values of the consequent, this method can also be a candidate
to answer Optimal RI queries. For this, we have only to select
those points with the maximum (minimum) inferred value.
This means that we can invoke this method for k points, then
get m ≤ k points as a result, and pick the n ≤ m points with
the maximum (minimum) inferred value. We discuss the effect
of using this strategy in Section VII.
D. The Optimization Method
Algorithm 3 presents the optimization method. Its inputs are
an FSI model (fsi), a query window (qw), an integer number
(max depth), and an optimization technique (optim). This
method differs from the discretization method in the sense that
its goal is to discover points with the maximum (minimum)
 Algorithm 3: Evaluation of the optimization method.
Input: An FSI model (fsi), a query window (qw), an integer number
(max depth), and an optimization technique (optim)
Output: A set of points where each point is labeled with an inferred
value.
1 Let qw inferred points be an empty list of pairs in the format (p, v)
2 Let target be the LVal with the largest (smallest) domain values of the
consequent part from the rules set of fsi
3 qw inferred points ←
optim method recursive(fsi, qw , max depth, 0,
qw inferred points, optim, target)
4 return qw inferred points
Algorithm 4: The algorithm of the recursive function
employed by Algorithm 3.
Input: An FSI model (fsi), a query window (qw), two integer numbers
(max depth and curr depth), a list of pairs (result list), an
optimization technique (optim), and an LVal (target).
Output: A set of points where each point is labeled with an inferred
value.
1 Function optim_method_recursive(fsi, qw , max depth,
curr depth, result list, optim, target)
2 if max depth = curr depth then
3 return result list
4 subquadrants ← make grid(qw, 2, 2)
5 foreach q in subquadrants do
6 optim res ← optim(fsi, q) // eval is used as fitness function
7 if µtarget (optim res.value) > 0 then
8 add(result list, (optim res.point, optim res.value))
9 result list ← optim method recursive(fsi, q,
max depth, curr depth +
1, result list, optim, target)
10 return result list
inferred value. The main strategy is to recursively divide the
query window into subquadrants and explore them to find such
points. The parameter max depth determines the maximum
number of times the subdivision is performed. In addition, this
method requires an optimization technique that allows us to
get the points with the maximum (minimum) inferred value in
a subquadrant. Examples of optimization techniques include
genetic algorithms [13] and the particle swarm optimization
(PSO) [14]. While the optimization techniques have their
own specific parameters, in general, they all deploy a fitness
function to evaluate candidate solutions to the problem. In our
case, a candidate solution is a point with an inferred value
calculated by Algorithm 1 and the objective is to select only
the point inside a range (i.e., subquadrant) with the maximum
(minimum) inferred value. This means that the fitness function
corresponds to the function eval in Algorithm 1 and that
the input optimization technique optim in Algorithm 3 is
parameterized with this fitness function.
Algorithm 3 starts by creating an auxiliary list of pairs to
store its result (line 1). Each pair has the format (p, v) where p
is a point object and v is its inferred value. Next, the algorithm
sets the target according to the user’s goal (line 2). If the user
wants to maximize (minimize) inferred values, Algorithm 3
considers the LVal that contains the largest (smallest) values
of the domain of the consequent as the target.
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The optimization method (line 3) itself is a recursive ap-
proach and shown in Algorithm 4. In addition to the input
parameters of Algorithm 3, Algorithm 4 gets an integer
value that denotes the current depth of the recursive call
(curr depth), an auxiliary list of pairs (result list), and the
target LVal (target) as input parameters. The stop condition
of the recursive call of Algorithm 4 is whether it has reached
the maximum depth given as input (lines 2 and 3). In this
case, the algorithm returns the list of pairs obtained so far
and, consequently, Algorithm 3 stops its execution as well
(line 4). Otherwise, Algorithm 4 splits the query window into
four subquadrants (line 4), which are rectangles of equal size
covering the query window. For each subquadrant (lines 5 to
9), it applies the optimization technique optim to find the point
with the maximum (minimum) inferred value by considering
the subquadrant as the search space (line 6). As previously
discussed, we assume that the optimization technique is given
by the user and employs Algorithm 1 as its fitness function.
Then, Algorithm 4 tests if the inferred value of the resulting
point has a membership degree greater than 0 in the target LVal
(line 7). If the point satisfies this test, the point is appended
to the result (line 8). Further, the subquadrant containing the
point can be recursively explored (line 9) so that the query
window of the next call is now the subquadrant and the current
depth of the recursive call is incremented by one. In this
way, Algorithm 4 pursues a pruning strategy since it does not
explore subquadrants whose maximum (minimum) inferred
values do not contribute to the final answer of the evaluation.
We can calculate the maximum number of resulting points
of the optimization method as follows. Since the maximum
number of recursive calls is determined by the parameter
max depth and at most four points can be returned in each
Pmax depth
level of the recursive call, we obtain at most i=1 4i .
Note that the minimum value for max depth is 1 since if it is
0, the query window is not split.
Figure 4 depicts the evaluation of the optimization method
for one query window of our running example (Figure 2b). To
better visualize this query window, we zoom into the south
west part of Staten Island of New York City. We aim to
discover the best locations to visit. Thus, we are interested in
gathering the points with the maximum inferred values. The
example assumes max depth = 2 to execute Algorithm 3.
Only the top-right subquadrant of the first level of the recursive
call has a point with some degree in the LVal great. Thus,
Algorithm 4 is recursively called to deal with this subquadrant,
which is in turn split into its four contained subquadrants, as
shown in Figure 4a. Three subquadrants have selected points
leading to the resulting points depicted in Figure 4b. Note that
the method has pruned four subquadrants in its evaluation.
VII. C OMPARATIVE A NALYSIS OF R EGION I NFERENCE
Q UERIES
In this section, we conduct a comparative analysis of the
RI methods described in Sections VI-C and VI-D. The goal
is to characterize the behavior of these methods so that we
can understand their properties, similarities, and relationships.
 Inferred Value
80.0
100 14 6 67 61 55 71
77.5

k
75.0
10,000 1,827 714 6,531 6,716 6,434 6,528
72.5

70.0 1 2 3 4 5 6
Query Window Average
Inferred Value
(a) discretization method 79
(a) quadrants (b) resulting points
78
Fig. 4. The execution of a query window inference by using the optimization 77
method. 4 242 33 315 335 338 339 76
75
74
3 74 11 83 84 84 84

max_depth
73
The experimental setup of the comparative analysis is de-
tailed in Section VII-A, while the results are discussed in
Section VII-B. 2 19 4 20 20 20 20

A. Experimental Setup
1 4 1 4 4 4 4
The comparative analysis employs our running example.
Hence, it uses the spatial plateau region objects built for each 1 2 3 4 5 6
LVar of the application (Sections IV and V) to specify an FSI Query Window

model and evaluate the RI methods by using the six query
windows depicted in Figure 2b. These windows have been
randomly generated inside the geometric shape of New York
City. They have the unique identifiers 1 to 6 and different
sizes with respect to the total area of the bounding box
encompassing New York City. The query windows 1 and 2
have 0.1% of the total area, the windows 3 and 4 have 1%, and
the last two windows have 5%. These sizes allow us to analyze
the effect of different query window sizes on our methods.
We have employed the package fsr [10] to implement the
RI methods and the running example and to conduct our
comparative analysis. It is an R package that implements
the data types and operations defined by the Spatial Plateau
Algebra and allows users to create FSI models.
To understand the behavior of these methods, we have
selected the following parameter values. For the discretization
method, we have used 100 and 1,000 as values for the
parameter k and great as the value for the target LVal. For the
optimization method, we have used the PSO algorithm with the
value 10 chosen for the PSO specific parameters population
size and maximum number of iterations [14]. Further, we have
used the values 1 to 4 for the parameter max depth.
B. Understanding the Characterization and Applicability of
the Region Inference Methods
Figure 5 depicts some statistical results when executing the
RI methods in the context of our running example. We use heat
maps to relate the number of points returned by each method
and shown by the labels in the cells with the average inferred
value represented by a grayscale color. The x-axis refers to
the identifier of the query window, and the y-axis relates to
the parameters of the respective RI method. Figure 5 allows
us to understand the following characterizations.
With respect to the number of points, the discretization
method has distinguished itself in returning the largest number
of points. This is expected since this method picks points
whose inferred value belongs to the target LVal, while the
(b) optimization method
Fig. 5. The relationship between the average inferred values and the number
of returned points for each RI method.
optimization method is stricter in the selection process. Both
methods have in common that the number of returned points
grows as their parameter values increase. We observe that
the growth rates for the different query windows can be
approximated by linear functions. With respect to the query
window size, if it is small, the number of returned points tends
to be small too. This aspect is more evident for query window
2 in the optimization methods because of its pruning strategy.
If the query window is small, its division generates very small
subquadrants that possibly do not have points belonging to the
final answer.
As for the average inferred value of the points returned by
the methods, we highlight the optimization method since it
has shown the highest averages in all query windows. The
parameter max depth exerts a strong influence in the picked
points. If we increase it, we decrease the average inferred value
of the returned points. This behavior mainly appears in small
query windows (e.g., windows 1 and 2) due to the following
fact. For each subquadrant, the optimization method finds one
point with the maximum inferred value inside the subquadrant
only. Thus, the method possibly adds points that do not have
the global maximum inferred value. On the other hand, the
inclusion of points that have inferred values lower than but
very near to the maximum value can provide a diversity of
good choices for the users in applications.
Figure 6 compares the methods for processing optimal
RI queries of our running example. While the optimization
method is a natural candidate for this type of RI, we can also
apply the discretization method by selecting only those points
with the maximum (minimum) inferred value (as initially
discussed in Section VI-A). Let n be the number of points
returned by a method. Let further m ≤ n be the subset of

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 query window 1 query window 2
k = 100
k = 10,000
RI methods and their parameters
max_depth = 1
max_depth = 2
max_depth = 3
max_depth = 4
query window 4 query window 5
k = 100
k = 10,000
max_depth = 1
max_depth = 2
max_depth = 3
max_depth = 4
0 25 50 75 100 0 25 50 75 100 0
% of points with the maximum inferred value
Fig. 6. The accuracy rate of the methods when evaluating Optimal RIs.
points with the maximum inferred value. We compare the
precision of each configuration of the methods by considering
the ratio m/n. Clearly, the optimization method shows the
highest accuracy results. The discretization method returns
more points than the optimization method (Figure 5) but the
majority of these points does not have the maximum inferred
value. Figure 6 also shows the influence of the parameter
max depth. If we divide the query window multiple times
and collect points with the maximum inferred value in the
subquadrants only (these points represent local maxima), we
tend to decrease the accuracy rate. This is intensified when
small query windows are employed (e.g., windows 1 and 2).
Supported by our comparative analysis, we highlight two
important conclusions. First, we recommend that the dis-
cretization method be employed to process linguistic value-
based RI queries. There are two essential factors to be consid-
ered when determining the value of k. If the query window is
large (small) and users want to increase (decrease) the number
of points returned by the method, then the value of k should be
large (small). Second, we recommend the use of the optimiza-
tion method for processing optimal RI queries. Its strategy of
subdividing the query window in subquadrants helps one find
only points with the maximum (minimum) inferred values.
This method has provided the best accuracy rates. For small
query windows, the value 2 for the parameter max depth is
desirable; it provided accuracy rates from 84.21% to 100%.
For large query windows, this parameter should be increased
to 3 to augment the number of points returned by the method.
It showed accuracy rates ranging from 67.57% to 96.43%.
VIII. C ONCLUSIONS AND F UTURE W ORK
In this paper, we have introduced a new type of inference
method called region inference. Its novelty consists in the
combination of spatial query processing and fuzzy inference
methods. Based on a method for point inference, we have in-
troduced novel methods for two spatial inference types named
linguistic value-based region inference and optimal region
inference. A comparative analysis supported by a running
application example has revealed the characteristics, benefits,
and advantages of these inference methods.
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query window 3 For future work, we see the following interesting topics.
Our query windows are static. But there are many applications
that would benefit from fuzzy spatial inference on moving
windows. For example, consider a user who is driving in a
car and repeatedly asking for the most interesting locations to
visit nearby. This would lead us to continuous fuzzy spatial
query window 6
inference queries. Another possible topic is that based on the
behavior identified in our comparative analysis, we aim to
propose an automatic approach to determining the maximum
depth that the optimization method can go without provoking
disturbance in the maximum (minimum) inferred values of
25 50 75 100
the points (i.e., to minimize the standard deviation). More
precisely, the goal could be to propose a variable optimization
method which performs the exploration of the search space in
a different way. For example, a subquadrant should be visited
only if it satisfies a given condition related to the history of
previously identified points. Finally, we also aim to compare
and analyze the runtime of the proposed RI methods. Further,
we plan to improve their performance by using spatial indexing
structures provided by spatial libraries [15].
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