Assessing the accuracy of spatial simulation models

Quantitative methods are necessary to assess the accuracy of spatial simulation models. Within this article we are going to present and review a set of measurements which can be applied on the evaluation of the accuracy spatial simulation by comparing the maps resulting from the spatial simulation and the reference data. These measurements can be divided into two groups: (a) one group applied to hard maps and data and (b) another applied to fuzzy maps and data. In (a) the measurements described are based in contingency matrices, and they are, overall accuracy, Kappa, Tau and AMI. In (b) the measurements described are obtained from fuzzy sets theory (frequency, magnitude, source and nature of the errors), entropy, Euclidean distance, cross-entropy and contiguity. Some examples are also presented.