Mining multilevel spatial association rules with cloud models

The traditional generalization-based knowledge discovery method is introduced. A new kind of multilevel spatial association of the rules mining method based on the cloud model is presented. The cloud model integrates the vague and random use of linguistic terms in a unified way. With these models, spatial and nonspatial attribute values are well generalized at multiple levels, allowing discovery of strong spatial association rules. Combining the cloud model based method with Apriori algorithms for mining association rules from a spatial database shows benefits in being effective and flexible.