Multicriteria Prioritization of Geospatial Data Sources Using the Neutrosophic Hierarchical Analytic Process in Spatial Ontologies

Abstract

The need for an automatic fusion of heterogeneous, generally untrustworthy geospatial sources into spatial ontologies necessitates prioritization when conflicts arise or lower qualities emerge. Unfortunately, most existing literature does not offer systematic, evaluative, analytical criteria for determining the trustworthiness and polyhedral quality of such sources, which, in turn, causes quality deficiencies in spatial relations of the final product. Here we offer a methodology based on the Neutrosophic Hierarchical Analytic Process to derive the aforementioned prioritization including considerations such as geometric accuracy, existence and accessibility of metadata, frequency of updates, and topological correctness. A calibrated, reliability-testing approach was applied to two sets of case studies; one in the US and one in Singapore, with a Neutrosophic comparison matrix yielding results despite inevitable uncertainties. Results show a significant improvement of integrity relative to the new ontology that not only creates spatial attributes in optimal efficiency but also reduces transformable semantic discrepancies. This research adds to the literature on neutrosophics and spatial ontologies by providing a systematic solution and tangible components for geographic information retrieval systems, while simultaneously opening doors for future research in integration and semantic uncertainty.