Enriching the spatial reasoning system RCC8

ABSTRACT

One of the necessary basic concepts for the spatial data analysis in GIS is to determine the spatial relations between arbitrary geographical objects. In a two-dimensional space (IR²), most existing topological models can distinguish the eight topological relations between two spatial regions A and B. These eight relations are written in the traditional form of the spatial reasoning system RCC8: DC, EC, EQ, PO, TPP, TPPi, NTPP and NTPPi. Because of the complexity of topological relations between geographic regions, it is difficult for these models to describe in detail the topological relations by defining the separation number of lines and points that characterize these relations, and which is very important to enrich the spatial relations of system RCC8. To overcome the insufficiency in existing models, the extension of the Intersection and Difference (ID) model has the ability to describe in detail the topological relations of system RCC8.

In our study, we focus our work on the four relations EC, PO, TPP and TPPi which can be described by the boundary-boundary intersection operator ∂A∩∂B. The main contributions are these four detailed relations which are written and described in the general form EC_{mL, nP, kR}, PO_{mL, nP, jRI, kR}, TPP_{mLT, nPT, kR} and TPPi_{mLT, nPT, kR}. Then, we develop definitions for the generalization of these detailed relations. Finally, examples are provided to illustrate the generalization of these new detailed spatial relations.

REFERENCES

• 1: Egenhofer, M. J. and Franzosa, R. 1991. Point-Set Topological Spatial Relations. International Journal of Geographical Information Systems, Vol. 5(2), pp. 161--174, 1991.
• 2: Egenhofer, M. J. 1989. A Formal Definition of Binary Topological Relationships. Springer-Verlag, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 367, pp. 457--472, 1989.
• 3: Egenhofer, M. J. and Herring, J. 1991. Categorizing binary topological relationships between regions, lines and points in geographic databases. Santa Barbara, CA, pp. 1--28, 1991.
• 4: Max J. Egenhofer , Jayant Sharma, Topological Relations Between Regions in R² and Z², Proceedings of the Third International Symposium on Advances in Spatial Databases, p.316-336, June 23-25, 1993
• 5: Min Deng , Tao Cheng , Xiaoyong Chen , Zhilin Li, Multi-level Topological Relations Between Spatial Regions Based Upon Topological Invariants, Geoinformatica, v.11 n.2, p.239-267, June 2007 [doi>10.1007/s10707-006-0004-x]
• 6: Egenhofer, M. J., Sharma, J. and Mark, D. M. 1993. A Critical Comparison of the 4-Intersection and 9-Intersection Models for Spatial Relations: Formal Analysis. In Autocarto 11, R. McMaster and M. Armstrong (eds.), Minneapolis, MN, October 1993.
• 7: Egenhofer, M. J. and Franzosa, R. 1995. On the Equivalence of Topological Relations. International Journal of Geographical Information Systems, Vol. 9(2), pp. 133--152, 1995.
• 8: Egenhofer, M. J. 1993. A Model for Detailed Binary Topological Relationships. In Geomatica, Vol. 47 (3&4), pp. 261--273, 1993.
• 9: Corine Land Cover (CLC2000) database http://terrestrial.eionet.europa.eu/CLC2000

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.2 DATABASE MANAGEMENT
      H.2.8 Database applications
          Subjects: Image databases

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.2 DATABASE MANAGEMENT
      H.2.8 Database applications
          Subjects: Spatial databases and GIS

General Terms:
Algorithms, Management, Theory

Keywords:
GIS, change detection, generalization of detailed topological relations, spatial reasoning