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Representing topological relationships among heterogeneous Geometry-Collection features

  • Knowledge and Data Processing
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Abstract

Topological relationships between two spatial features represent important knowledge in Geographical Information Systems (GIS). In the last few years, many models that represent topological relationships have been proposed. But these models cannot represent the topological relationships between heterogeneous geometrycollection features, which are composed of different dimensional geometries. In this paper, the formal definition of regular heterogeneous geometrycollection and regularization rules are given. Based on the spatial model, two methods for representing topological relationships between these complex features are proposed. The first method is Dimensionally Extended Nine-Intersection Model Based on Components (DE-9IMBC) that extends Dimensionally Extended Nine-Intersection Model (DE-9IM) and takes into account the topological relationships between components of these complex features. The advantage of DE-9IMBC is that a large number of different topological relationships can be checked. The second method extends the definitions of topological relationships in Open Geodata Interoperability Specification (Open GIS), and redefines the seven named topological relationships: {Disjoint, Touches, Within, Crosses, Overlaps, Contains and Equal}, to represent the topological relationships between heterogeneous geometrycollection features. It is proven that the seven extended topological relationships are complete and mutually exclusive, and they are suitable for being embedded in spatial query languages.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Electronic Science and Engineering, National University of Defense Technology, 410073, Changsha, P.R. China

    Zhi-Nong Zhong, Ning Jing, Luo Chen & Qiu-Yun Wu

Authors
  1. Zhi-Nong Zhong
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  2. Ning Jing
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  3. Luo Chen
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  4. Qiu-Yun Wu
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Correspondence to Zhi-Nong Zhong.

Additional information

Regular Paper

This work is supported by the National High Technology Research and Development 863 Program of China (Grant No. 2002AA131010).

Zhi-Nong Zhong was born in 1975. He is a Ph.D. candidate at School of Electronic Science and Engineering, National University of Defense Technology. His research interests are GIS and database systems.

Ning Jing was born in 1963. He is a professor and Ph.D. supervisor of the School of Electronic Science and Engineering, National University of Defense Technology. His current research areas are GIS, database systems, GIS/Database application for Internet information services.

Luo Chen was born in 1973. He is currently an associate professor and Ph.D. candidate at School of Electronic Science and Engineering, National University of Defense Technology. His research interests are GIS and database systems.

Qiu-Yun Wu was born in 1973. He is currently an instructor of School of Electronic Science and Engineering, National University of Defense Technology. His research interests are database systems and Internet applications.

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Zhong, ZN., Jing, N., Chen, L. et al. Representing topological relationships among heterogeneous Geometry-Collection features. J. Comput. Sci. & Technol. 19, 280–289 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02944898

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02944898

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