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Mereological inheritance

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Spatial Cognition and Computation

Abstract

In recent investigations of Spatial Reasoning, SpatialKnowledge Representation, and Geographic Information Systems, asignificant effort has been spent by many scholars of the areaabout the problem of representing properties of spatial objects bymeans of logical theories.

An analogous effort has been the problem of analyzingthe qualitative relations which can be established between twospace regions. These investigations have led to a generalframework of the field known by the term ``mereo-topology''.

Though both the above mentioned approaches have proved to besuccessful in the investigation of formal and practically relevantaspects of spatial objects, no attempt has been carried out in the direction of integrating the approaches and looking at the relationshipbetween a general logical theory of space and mereo-topology from an analytical point of view, in particular for exploiting thecombinatorial behaviour of such an integrated model.

This paper intends to fill the gap and analyze the behaviour ofspatial formulae of a logical theory of space as objects which canbe classified based on the behaviour they exhibit with respect tothe parts and supertparts of the regions where they are true. Wename these categories of behaviourinheritance modalities.

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Belussi, A., Cristani, M. Mereological inheritance. Spatial Cognition and Computation 2, 467–494 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1015536208092

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