Methods for assessing geodiversity

The assessment of geodiversity can be made with qualitative, quantitative and qualitative-quantitative methods. Qualitative methods have a descriptive character and are suitable for nominal and ordinal data. Quantitative methods are based on a set of parameters and indicators to determine a geodiversity index of a certain area. Qualitative-quantitative methods result in a combination of quantitative (i.e., digital) and cause-effect data (i.e., relational and explanatory). At the current stage of development, qualitative-quantitative methods are the most advanced and the ones offering more reliable results. Their main advantage is the integration of data from different sources and with different content and their wide use within geographic information systems, both at the stage of data collection and data integration, as well as during numerical processing and output presentation. The limitation of these methods is related to difficulties concerning the validation of results. The development of qualitative-quantitative methods associated with cognitive issues should be expected in the near future, oriented towards ontology and the Semantic Web.