Qualitative Spatial Reasoning in RCC8 with OWL and SWRL

Stella Marc-Zwecker, François de Bertrand de Beuvron, Cecilia Zanni-Merk, Florence Le Ber

2013

Abstract

The Region Connection Calculus (RCC), and particularly its RCC8 subset, have been extensively studied and used for qualitative spatial reasoning. Some sets of computational operations have also been defined for topological relations, as the CM8 set, that allows to compute the RCC8 relationships on raster images. In this paper, we propose a reified representation of the RCC8 spatial relationships and of the CM8 primitives, within a lattice of concepts, implemented in OWL (Ontology Web Language) in order to help the interpretation of urban satellite images. Our approach allows for a straightforward representation of concepts corresponding to conjuctions or disjunctions of RCC8 spatial relationships, and thus offers the advantage to overcome some drawbacks of the existing approaches in OWL, where spatial relations are represented as roles. Indeed, the OWL language does not allow the expression of the disjunction or of the conjunction of roles. We can then implement a reasoning on the RCC8 relationships, which in particular allows to compute the composition table and its transitive closure. As the reification of roles precludes the use of role’s properties, such as symmetry and transitivity, we propose to implement RCC8 inferences through SWRL rules (Semantic Web Rule Language).

References

1. Batsakis, S. and Petrakis, E. G. M. (2011). SOWL: A Framework for Handling Spatio-temporal Information in OWL 2.0. In RuleML Europe, pages 242-249.
2. Clementini, E., Felice, P. D., and Oosterom, P. v. (1993). A small set of formal topological relationships suitable for end-user interaction. In Proceedings of the Third International Symposium on Advances in Spatial Databases, SSD 93, pages 277-295, London, UK. Springer-Verlag.
3. Cravero, M., Zanni-Merk, C., de Bertrand de Beuvron, F., and Marc-Zwecker, S. (2012). A Description Logics

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Marc-Zwecker S., de Bertrand de Beuvron F., Zanni-Merk C. and Le Ber F. (2013). Qualitative Spatial Reasoning in RCC8 with OWL and SWRL . In Proceedings of the International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Ontology Development - Volume 1: KEOD, (IC3K 2013) ISBN 978-989-8565-81-5, pages 214-221. DOI: 10.5220/0004543702140221

in Bibtex Style

@conference{keod13,
author={Stella Marc-Zwecker and François de Bertrand de Beuvron and Cecilia Zanni-Merk and Florence Le Ber},
title={Qualitative Spatial Reasoning in RCC8 with OWL and SWRL},
booktitle={Proceedings of the International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Ontology Development - Volume 1: KEOD, (IC3K 2013)},
year={2013},
pages={214-221},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0004543702140221},
isbn={978-989-8565-81-5},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Ontology Development - Volume 1: KEOD, (IC3K 2013)
TI - Qualitative Spatial Reasoning in RCC8 with OWL and SWRL
SN - 978-989-8565-81-5
AU - Marc-Zwecker S.
AU - de Bertrand de Beuvron F.
AU - Zanni-Merk C.
AU - Le Ber F.
PY - 2013
SP - 214
EP - 221
DO - 10.5220/0004543702140221