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Directional relations and frames of reference

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Abstract

As an intermediate category between metric and topology, directional relations are as much varied as “right of”, “before”, “between”, “in front of”, “back”, “north of”, “east of”, and so on. Directional relations are ambiguous if taken alone without the contextual information described by frames of reference. In this paper, we identify a unifying framework for directional relations and frames of reference, which shows how a directional relation with its associated frame of reference can be mapped to a projective relation of the 5-intersection model. We discuss how this knowledge can be integrated in spatial query languages.

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Notes

  1. We use the terminology of [5, 8, 20]: the primary object is the one to be located and the reference objects are the ones in relation to which the primary object is located.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the anonymous reviewers and the area editor for suggesting important new insights to the first submitted version of this paper.

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  1. Department of Electrical and Information Engineering, University of L’Aquila, L’Aquila, Italy

    Eliseo Clementini

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Clementini, E. Directional relations and frames of reference. Geoinformatica 17, 235–255 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10707-011-0147-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10707-011-0147-2

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