In this paper, we present a set of spatial relations between concepts describing an ontological model for a new process of character recognition. Our main idea is based on the construction of the domain ontology modelling the Latin script. This ontology is composed by a set of concepts and a set of relations. The concepts represent the graphemes extracted by segmenting the manipulated document ...

To incorporate ontological concepts in natural language processing (NLP) it is often necessary to combine simple concepts into complex concepts (post-coordination). This is especially true in consumer language, where a more limited vocabulary forces consumers to utilize highly productive language that is almost impossible to pre-coordinate in an ontology. Our work focuses on recognizing an impo...

In several applications, there is the need to reason about spatial relations using multiple local frames of reference that are organized hierarchically. This paper focuses on hierarchical reasoning about direction relations, a special class of spatial relations that describe order in space (e.g., north or northeast). We assume a spatial database of points and regions. Points belong to regions, ...

One of the key strengths of the region connection calculus (RCC) — its generality — is also one of its most important drawbacks for practical applications. The semantics of all the topological relations of the RCC are based on an interpretation of connection between regions. Because of the manner in which the spatial relations are defined, given a particular interpretation of connection, the RC...

Directed line segments are fundamental geometric elements used to model through their spatial relations such concepts as divergence, confluence, and interference. A new model is developed that captures spatial relations between pairs of directed line segments through the intersections of the segments’ heads, bodies, and tails. This head-body-tail intersection identifies 68 classes of topologica...

In spatial reasoning the qualitative description of relations between spatial regions is of practical importance and has been widely studied. Examples of such relations are that two regions may meet only at their boundaries or that one region is a proper part of another. This paper shows how systems of relations between regions can be extended from precisely known regions to approximate ones. O...

One of the challenges raised by the construction of the semantic Web lies in the analysis and management of complex relationships (thematic, spatial and temporal) connecting several resources. The automatic discovery of such relations will improve the current capabilities of existing search engines. Spatial information plays an important role in the resources available on the Web, thus, integra...

This paper develops a new exploratory method for analyzing the relations among distributions of spatial objects. Existing methods usually focus on the distribution of one or two types of spatial objects. This paper, on the other hand, deals with the relations among more than two distributions of spatial objects. In addition, the method is applicable independent of the type of spatial objects. T...

Effective use of data stored in spatial databases requires methods for evaluation and enhancement of the quality of the data. Spatial data quality can be evaluated using a measure of internal validity, or consistency, of a data set. Capturing spatial data consistency is possible with a multi-step approach. A distance measure is used to detect implicit spatial relations between neighboring objec...