PLCA: A Framework for Qualitative Spatial Reasoning Based on Connection Patterns of Regions

Abstract

This chapter describes a framework called PLCA for Qualitative Spatial Reasoning (QSR) based on the connection patterns of regions. The goal of this chapter is to provide a simple but expressive and feasible representation for qualitative data with sufficient reasoning ability. PLCA provides a symbolic representation for spatial data using simple objects. The authors of this chapter define its expression and operations on it, and show the correspondance between the expression and a figure. PLCA also provides semantical reasoning incorporated with spatial reasoning. Moreover, it can be extended to handle shapes of regions. Throughout the study, the authors discovered many topics that relate QSR to other research areas such as topology, graph theory, and computational geometry, while achieving the research goals. This indicates that QSR is a very fruitful research area.