Qualitative spatial reasoning for determination of object relations using symbolic interval projections

Identification of various types of relations between spatial objects are of importance in all kinds of spatial informations systems such as, for instance GIS. A variation of symbolic projection, called symbolic interval projections, is used which turns out to be useful as an heuristic approach in determination of various kinds of object relations. Throughout the work, minimal enclosing rectangles are used as approximations of the objects, that is a low resolution description of the objects. The method can hence be considered as an indexing technique. It is shown how interval projections can be applied to relations of type distance and direction