Extension of RCC*-9 to Complex and Three-Dimensional Features and Its Reasoning System

Abstract

RCC*-9 is a mereotopological qualitative spatial calculus for simple lines and regions. RCC*-9 can be easily expressed in other existing models for topological relations and thus can be viewed as a candidate for being a “bridge” model among various approaches. In this paper, we present a revised and extended version of RCC*-9, which can handle non-simple geometric features, such as multipolygons, multipolylines, and multipoints, and 3D features, such as polyhedrons and lower-dimensional features embedded in R3. We also run experiments to compute RCC*-9 relations among very large random datasets of spatial features to demonstrate the JEPD properties of the calculus and also to compute the composition tables for spatial reasoning with the calculus.

Keywords

• qualitative spatial reasoning
• topological relations
• spatial features
• multiple geometry
• 3D
• composition tables