Modeling part-whole relationships for spatial data

Spatialapplications must managepartwhole (PW) relationships between spatial objects, for example, the division of an administrative region into zones based on land use. Support for conceptual modeling of relationships between parts and whole, suchasaggregationandmembership,hasbeenwellresearchedin the objectoriented (OO) community; however, spatial data has generally not been considered. We propose here a practical approachtointegratingsupport forspatialPWrelationshipsinto conceptual modeling languages. Three different types of relationships-spatial part, spatial membership, and spatial inclusion-that are of general utility in spatial applications are identified and formallydefined using a consistent classification framework based on spatial derivation and constraint relationships. An extension of the Unified Modeling Language (UML) forspatiotemporaldata, namelyExtended Spatiotemporal UML, is used to demonstrate the feasibility of using such an approach to define modeling constructs su...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2000
• Where: GIS
• Authors: Rosanne Price, Nectaria Tryfona, Christian S. Jensen
• Keywords: Automated Reasoning, Conceptual Modeling, GIS 2000, Spatial, Spatial Objects