Assessing the Consistency of Complete and Incomplete Topological
Information
Max Egenhofer and Jayant Sharma Geographical Systems 1 (1): 47-68, 1993.
Abstract
High-level topological information about spatial objects can be
described in terms of a set of binary topological relations between
the objects, also called a scene description. The objects of
interest are spatial regions, which are bounded objects that
have a distinct identity and are homeomorphic to a 2-disk. The
consistent integration of topological information relies inherently
on the algebraic properties of the relations between the objects.
Properties such as the converseness of pairs of relations and the
composition of relations must be fulfilled for any combination of
relations in order to guarantee that a scene description is free of
internal topological contradictions so that it can be realized in
R2. A rigorous computational method has been designed to reason
about binary topological relations between spatial regions and to
infer the consistency of complete and incomplete topological
information. As a side-product, the method can be also used to
refine incomplete observations. The method applies immediately in
spatial query processing in geographic information systems to
detect unsolvable queries prior to query execution and in data
fusion to integrate independently collected information.
Full article
Max Egenhofer and 
Jayant Sharma
