A model for describing and composing direction relations between overlapping and contained regions

  • Authors:

  • Shihong Du;Luo Guo;Qiao Wang

  • Affiliations:

  • Institute of Remote Sensing and GIS, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China;College of Life and Environmental Science, Central University for Nationalities, Beijing 100081, China;College of Geographic Information Science, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing 210097, China

  • Venue:
  • Information Sciences: an International Journal
  • Year:
  • 2008

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Abstract

Current models of direction relations are not designed to describe direction information inside the Minimum Bounding Rectangle (MBR) of a reference region. Thus, the direction relations between overlapping and contained regions cannot be effectively described and derived. To resolve this problem, a new model of direction relations, namely interior-boundary direction relations, is proposed in this study to describe direction concepts relative to the interior or boundary of a region, such as ''east part of a region'', ''west border of a region'', ''a line goes through east part of a region'', and etc. By combining the interior and exterior direction relations, three types of compositions of direction relations are investigated: (1) composing two interior direction relations which can be used to derive the interior or exterior direction relations between two regions with the same parent region; (2) composing an interior direction relation with an exterior direction relation; and (3) composing an interior with an exterior direction relation. The results indicate that the new interior-boundary direction relations and its compositions with exterior direction relations are powerful in describing and deriving direction relations between overlapped and contained regions.