Max Egenhofer Seventh International Symposium on Spatial Data Handling (SDH '96), Delft, The Netherlands,
M.-J. Kraak and M. Molenaar (eds.), pp. 12B.1-15, August 1996.
Abstract
People who use multiple channels at the same time communicate
more successfully about spatial problems than those who rely
exclusively on either voice or pictures. To achieve a similarly
successful interaction between a person and a geographic
information system (GIS), we use two concurrent communication
channels---graphics and speech---to construct a multi-modal spatial
query language in which users interact with a geographic database
by drawing sketches of the desired configuration, while
simultaneously talking about the spatial objects and the spatial
relations drawn. Through the combined use of graphics and sketch,
more intuitive and more precise specifications of spatial queries
are possible. The key to this interaction is the exploitation of
complementary or redundant information present in both graphical
and verbal descriptions of the same spatial scenes. A
multiple-resolution model of spatial relations is used to capture
the essential aspects of a sketch and its corresponding verbal
description. The model stresses topological properties, such as
containment and neighborhood, and considers metrical properties,
such as distances and directions, as refinements where necessary.
This model enables the retrieval of similar, not only exact,
matches between a spatial query and a geographic database. Such new
methods of multi-modal spatial querying and spatial similarity
retrieval will empower experts as well as novice users to perform
easier spatial searches, ultimately providing new user communities
access to spatial databases.
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Max Egenhofer