Fuzzy GML Modeling Based on Vague Soft Sets

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Geography Markup Language (GML) explicitly represents geographical spatial knowledge in text mode. All kinds of fuzzy problems will inevitably be encountered in spatial knowledge expression. Especially for those expressions in text mode, this fuzziness will be broader. Describing and representing fuzziness in GML seems necessary. Three kinds of fuzziness in GML can be found: element fuzziness, chain fuzziness, and attribute fuzziness. Both element fuzziness and chain fuzziness belong to the reflection of the fuzziness between GML elements and, then, the representation of chain fuzziness can be replaced by the representation of element fuzziness in GML. On the basis of vague soft set theory, two kinds of modeling, vague soft set GML Document Type Definition (DTD) modeling and vague soft set GML schema modeling, are proposed for fuzzy modeling in GML DTD and GML schema, respectively. Five elements or pairs, associated with vague soft sets, are introduced. Then, the DTDs and the schemas of the five elements are correspondingly designed and presented according to their different chains and different fuzzy data types. While the introduction of the five elements or pairs is the basis of vague soft set GML modeling, the corresponding DTD and schema modifications are key for implementation of modeling. The establishment of vague soft set GML enables GML to represent fuzziness and solves the problem of lack of fuzzy information expression in GML.