SPATIAL COGNITION AND COMPUTATION, 3(2&3), 207–222 Copyright c 2003, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Buffering Fuzzy Maps in GIS Hans W. Guesgen University of Auckland Joachim Hertzberg Fraunhofer Institute for Autonomous Intelligent Systems, Germany Richard Lobb University of Auckland Andrea Mantler University of North Carolina In this paper, we show how standard GIS operations like the complement, union, intersection, and buffering of maps can be made more flexible by using fuzzy set theory. In particular, we present a variety of algorithms for operations on fuzzy raster maps, focusing on buffer operations for such maps. Furthermore, we show how widely-available special-purpose hardware (in particular, z-buffering in graphics hardware) can be used for supporting buffer operations in fuzzy geographic information systems (GIS). Keywords: Geographic information systems, raster maps, buffering, fuzzy logic 1 Introduction Geographic information systems (GIS) have been in use for quite a while now (Coppock and Rhind, 1991), but their functionality has changed only little over Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Hans W. Guesgen, Department of Computer Science, University of Auckland, PMB 92019, Auckland, New Zealand; email hans@cs.auckland.ac.nz