We propose a hybrid geometric-qualitative spatial reasoning system that is able to simultaneously deal with input information that is partially given geometrically and partially qualitatively using spatial relations of different qualitative spatial calculi. The reasoning system combines a geometric reasoning component based on computational geometry methods with a qualitative reasoning component employing relation algebraic reasoning techniques. An egg-yolk representation approach is used to maintain information about objects with underdetermined geometry and also allows for vague objects in the input. In an experimental evaluation we apply the reasoning system to infer geometric information for a set of only qualitatively described objects. The experiments demonstrate that the hybrid reasoning approach produces better results than geometric and qualitative reasoning individually.
['Giorgio De Felice', 'Paolo Fogliaroni', 'Jan Oliver Wallgrün']
A hybrid geometric-qualitative spatial reasoning system and its application in GIS