Object-based Representation and Classification of Spatial Structures and Relations

Colloque avec actes et comité de lecture. internationale.International audienceThis paper is concerned with the representation and the classification of spatial relations and structures in an object-based knowledge representation system. In this system, spatial structures are defined as sets of spatial entities connected with topological relations. Relations are represented by objects with their own properties. We propose to define two types of properties: the first ones are concerned with relations as concepts while the second are concerned with relations as links between concepts. In order to represent the second type of properties, we have defined facets that are inspired from the constructors of description logics. We describe these facets and how they are used for classifying spatial structures and relations on land-use maps. The links between the present work and related work in description logics are also discussed

Modal Logics of Topological Relations

Logical formalisms for reasoning about relations between spatial regions play a fundamental role in geographical information systems, spatial and constraint databases, and spatial reasoning in AI. In analogy with Halpern and Shoham's modal logic of time intervals based on the Allen relations, we introduce a family of modal logics equipped with eight modal operators that are interpreted by the Egenhofer-Franzosa (or RCC8) relations between regions in topological spaces such as the real plane. We investigate the expressive power and computational complexity of logics obtained in this way. It turns out that our modal logics have the same expressive power as the two-variable fragment of first-order logic, but are exponentially less succinct. The complexity ranges from (undecidable and) recursively enumerable to highly undecidable, where the recursively enumerable logics are obtained by considering substructures of structures induced by topological spaces. As our undecidability results also capture logics based on the real line, they improve upon undecidability results for interval temporal logics by Halpern and Shoham. We also analyze modal logics based on the five RCC5 relations, with similar results regarding the expressive power, but weaker results regarding the complexity

A Whiteheadian-type description of Euclidean spaces, spheres, tori and Tychonoff cubes

In the beginning of the 20th century, A. N. Whitehead and T. de Laguna proposed a new theory of space, known as {\em region-based theory of space}. They did not present their ideas in a detailed mathematical form. In 1997, P. Roeper has shown that the locally compact Hausdorff spaces correspond bijectively (up to homeomorphism and isomorphism) to some algebraical objects which represent correctly Whitehead's ideas of {\em region} and {\em contact relation}, generalizing in this way a previous analogous result of de Vries concerning compact Hausdorff spaces (note that even a duality for the category of compact Hausdorff spaces and continuous maps was constructed by de Vries). Recently, a duality for the category of locally compact Hausdorff spaces and continuous maps, based on Roeper's results, was obtained by G. Dimov (it extends de Vries' duality mentioned above). In this paper, using the dualities obtained by de Vries and Dimov, we construct directly (i.e. without the help of the corresponding topological spaces) the dual objects of Euclidean spaces, spheres, tori and Tychonoff cubes; these algebraical objects completely characterize the mentioned topological spaces. Thus, a mathematical realization of the original philosophical ideas of Whitehead and de Laguna about Euclidean spaces is obtained.Comment: 29 page

Some more Problems about Orderings of Ultrafilters

We discuss the connection between various orders on the class of all the ultrafilters and certain compactness properties of abstract logics and of topological spaces. We present a model theoretical characterization of Comfort order. We introduce a new order motivated by considerations in abstract model theory. For each of the above orders, we show that if $E$ is a $(\lambda, \lambda)$-regular ultrafilter, and $D$ is not $(\lambda, \lambda)$-regular, then $E \not \leq D$. Many problems are stated.Comment: 7 page