Combining spatial and terminological reasoning

The paper presents a method for terminological reasoning about spatial objects on the basis of a KL-ONE-like framework (LOOM). We apply this method to the domain of deductive geographic information systems and parsing of visual languages. In contrast to existing work, which mainly focusses on reasoning about qualitative spatial relations, we integrate quantitative information with conceptual or terminological reasoning by the use of “generative” qualitative relations. These relations allow a modularization of systems for terminological reasoning and domain-specific storage and indexing of, e.g., spatial data. Qualitative relations are computed on demand from quantitative data during forward-chaining assertional reasoning.