Taxonomies of logically defined qualitative spatial relations

This paper develops a taxonomy of qualitative spatial relations for pairs of regions, which are all logically defined from two primitive (but axiomatized) notions. The first primitive is the notion of two regions being connected, which allows eight jointly exhaustive and pairwise disjoint relations to be defined. The second primitive is the convex hull of a region which allows many more relations to be defined. We also consider the development of the useful notions of composition tables for the defined relations and networks specifying continuous transitions between pairs of regions. We conclude by discussing what kind of criteria to apply when deciding how fine grained a taxonomy to create. (C) 1995 Academic Press Limited