This paper presents an idea to determinate the variant matching relationshinps among areal entities based on the overlay areas. Then a methodology to identify the counterpart elements based on the fuzzy classification of topological relationship is illustrated

which applies the concept of morphologic distance between areas introduced by Winter and the concept of fuzzy topological relationship theory. The resulted topological relationship between areas indicates the discre pancy between the considered areal features and also shows the degree of being or not being belonged to the identical features

which is important for further analysis or decision making. The methodology presented here enhances the technology of feature matching in the area of map conflation. Tests show that the method is well performed and has the ability to identify the non-one-to-one matching relationship and is well suited for areal feature matching among urban geographic databases with the same scales as well as similar scales.