Synonyms
Region connection calculus; RCC; 9‐Intersection calculus; 4‐Intersection calculus; Pointless topology
Definition
Topology, which is founded on the notion of connectedness, is at the heart of many systems of qualitative spatial relations; since it is possible to define a notion of parthood from connection, and theories of parthood are called mereologies, such combined theories are generally called mereotopologies. The best known set of relations based on a primitive notion of connectedness is the Region Connection Calculus (RCC), which defines several sets of jointly exhaustive and pairwise disjoint, (JEPD) relations, RCC‑5, a purely mereological set, and the more widely used RCC-8 set of eight relations illustrated in Fig. 1. The primitive relation used in RCC (and several related theories) is C(x,y) – true when region x is connected to region y. A largely equivalent set of relations can be defined in the 4‐intersection model in which relations between regions are defined in...
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Recommended Reading
Cohn, A.G., Hazarika, S.M.: Qualitative Spatial Representation and Reasoning: An Overview. Fundam. Inf. 46(1–2), 1–29 (2001)
Cohn, A.G., Renz, J.: Qualitative Spatial Representation and Reasoning. In: Lifschitz, V., van Harmelen, F., Porter, F. (eds.) Handbook of Knowledge Representation, Ch. 13. Elsevier, München (2007)
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© 2008 Springer-Verlag
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Cohn, A.G. (2008). Mereotopology. In: Shekhar, S., Xiong, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of GIS. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-35973-1_777
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-35973-1_777
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
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