Fuzzy Entropy-Based Spatial Hotspot Reliability
1
Dipartimento di Architettura, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Via Toledo 402, 80134 Napoli, Italy
2
Centro Interdipartimentale di Ricerca in Urbanistica Alberto Calza Bini, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Via Toledo 402, 80134 Napoli, Italy
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Academic Editor: Pavel Sevastjanov
Entropy 2021, 23(5), 531; https://doi.org/10.3390/e23050531
Received: 8 April 2021
/
Accepted: 22 April 2021
/
Published: 26 April 2021
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Entropy Method for Decision Making)
Cluster techniques are used in hotspot spatial analysis to detect hotspots as areas on the map; an extension of the Fuzzy C-means that the clustering algorithm has been applied to locate hotspots on the map as circular areas; it represents a good trade-off between the accuracy in the detection of the hotspot shape and the computational complexity. However, this method does not measure the reliability of the detected hotspots and therefore does not allow us to evaluate how reliable the identification of a hotspot of a circular area corresponding to the detected cluster is; a measure of the reliability of hotspots is crucial for the decision maker to assess the need for action on the area circumscribed by the hotspots. We propose a method based on the use of De Luca and Termini’s Fuzzy Entropy that uses this extension of the Fuzzy C-means algorithm and measures the reliability of detected hotspots. We test our method in a disease analysis problem in which hotspots corresponding to areas where most oto-laryngo-pharyngeal patients reside, within a geographical area constituted by the province of Naples, Italy, are detected as circular areas. The results show a dependency between the reliability and fluctuation of the values of the degrees of belonging to the hotspots.
View Full-Text
Keywords:
hotspots; fuzzy clustering; FCM; EFCM; fuzzy entropy; reliability
▼
Show Figures
Figure 1
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Di Martino, F.; Sessa, S. Fuzzy Entropy-Based Spatial Hotspot Reliability. Entropy 2021, 23, 531. https://doi.org/10.3390/e23050531
AMA Style
Di Martino F, Sessa S. Fuzzy Entropy-Based Spatial Hotspot Reliability. Entropy. 2021; 23(5):531. https://doi.org/10.3390/e23050531
Chicago/Turabian StyleDi Martino, Ferdinando, and Salvatore Sessa. 2021. "Fuzzy Entropy-Based Spatial Hotspot Reliability" Entropy 23, no. 5: 531. https://doi.org/10.3390/e23050531
Find Other Styles
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.
