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 (IR 2 ), 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.