Geographic Information Systems
Attributes Classification Methods
Dr. Arun K. Saraf,
Professor
Department of Earth Sciences
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Attributes Classification in GIS
Humans use categories in every aspect of everyday life to
make sense of the world.
Classification is the process of organizing data into group /
categories according to shared qualities or characteristics.
Classification is used in GIS, cartography and remote
sensing to generalize complexity in geospatial data.
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There are six classification methods, which are
commonly used in GIS:
• Equal Interval
• Natural Breaks (Jenks)
• Quantile
• Equal Area
• Standard Deviations
• Geometrical interval
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Classificaiton methods in GIS
Classification method changes a continuous data theme
(e.g. a DEM) to discrete classes
The purpose of classification is two-fold:
• To make the process of reading and understanding a map
easier
• To show something about the area which is being studied
that is not self-evident
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Equal Interval
• The equal interval method
divides the range of attribute
values into equal sized sub-
ranges
• Then the features are classified
based on those sub-ranges
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Natural Breaks (Jenks)
• This method identifies breakpoints between classes using
a statistical formula (Jenk’s optimization)
• This method is rather complex, but basically the Jenk’s
method minimizes the sum of the variance within each of
the classes
• Natural Breaks finds groupings and patterns inherent in
your data
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Quantile
• In this method, each class contains
the same number of features
• Quantile classes are perhaps the
easiest to understand, but they can
be misleading.
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• Population counts (as opposed to density or
percentage), for example, are usually not suitable
for quantile classification because only a few places
are highly populated.
• One can overcome this distortion by increasing the
number of classes.
• Quantiles are best suited for data that is linearly
distributed
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Equal Area
This method classifies polygon features by
finding breakpoints so that the total area of
the polygons in each class is the
approximately the same.
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• Classes determined with the equal area
method are typically very similar to Quantile
classes when the sizes of all the features are
roughly the same.
• Equal Area will differ from Quantile if the
features are of vastly different areas.
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Standard Deviations
In this method, the mean value is found
and then class breaks above and below the
mean at intervals of either 1/4, 1/2, or 1
standard deviations are placed until all the
data values are contained within the
classes.
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Further, values are aggregated those are beyond
three standard deviations from the mean into
two classes, greater than three standard
deviations above the mean ("> 3 Std Dev.") and
less than three standard deviations below the
mean ("< -3 Std. Dev.").
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Geometrical interval
• This is a classification scheme where the class
breaks are based on class intervals that have a
geometrical series.
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• The geometric coefficient in this classifier can
change once (to its inverse) to optimize the
class ranges.
• The algorithm creates these geometrical
intervals by minimizing the square sum of
element per class.
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• This ensures that each class range has approximately
the same number of values with each class and that
the change between intervals is fairly consistent.
• This algorithm was specifically designed to
accommodate continuous data
• It produces a result that is visually appealing and
cartographically comprehensive.
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• It minimizes variance within classes, and can
even work reasonably well on data that is not
normally distributed.
• This classification method is also called Smart
Quantiles
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Equal interval Quantile Natural breaks (Jenks)
Geometrical interval Standard deviation
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Manual Classification
Manually classification is done
to emphasize a particular
range of values, such as those
above or below a threshold
value.
For example, one may want to emphasize areas below a
certain elevation level that are susceptible to flooding.
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MAHARASTRA (District classification based on Rural Houses Percentage)
NAGPUR
DHULE BHANDARA
JALGAON AMRAVATI
WARDHA
BULDANA
AKOLA
NASHIK CHANDRAPUR
YAVATMAL
AURANGABAD
GADCHIROLI
THANE JALNA
AHMADNAGAR PARBHANI
BID
NANDED
PUNE
RAIGARH Rural Houses (%)
0 - 10
OSMANABAD 10 - 20
SATARA SOLAPUR 20 - 30
30 - 40
RATNAGIRI 40 - 50
SANGLI
50 - 60
KOLHAPUR 60 - 70
LATUR 70 - 80
SINDHUDURG 0 50 100 150 Kilometers
80 - 90
90 - 100
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• …there has been lot of discussion about Latur
Earthquake….
• Why there is not much discussion about Jabalpur?
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MADHAYA PRADESH (District classification based on Rural Houses Percentage)
JABALPUR
KHARGON Rural Houses (%)
0 - 10
KHANDAWA 10 - 20
20 - 30
30 - 40
40 - 50
50 - 60
60 - 70
0 100 200 Kilometers 70 - 80
80 - 90
90 - 100
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DISTRICT LATUR KHARGON JABALPUR
THEME
RURAL POPULATION 79.6 85.0 54.5
(%)
URBAN 20.4 15.0 45.5
POPULATION (%)
RURAL HOUSES (%) 79.6 83.9 55.6
URBAN HOUSES (%) 20.4 16.1 44.4
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THANKS
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