Toward comparing maps as spatial processes

We are concerned with comparing two or more categorical maps. This type of task frequently occurs in remote sensing, in geographical information analysis and in landscape ecology, but it is also an emerging topic in medical image analysis. Existing approaches are mostly pattern-based and focus on composition, with little or no consideration of configuration. Based on a web-survey and a workshop, we identified some key strategies to handle local and hierarchical comparisons and developed algorithms which include significance tests. We attempt to fully integrate map comparison in a process-based inferential framework, where the critical questions are: (1) Could the observed differences have arisen purely by chance? and/or (2) Could the observed maps have been generated by the same process?