Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Encyclopedia of Database Systems pp 396–399Cite as

Cardinal Direction Relationships

  • Reference work entry
  • First Online:

  • 14 Accesses

Synonyms

Directional relationships; Orientation relationships

Definition

Cardinal direction relationships are qualitative spatial relations that describe how an object is placed relative to other objects utilizing a coordinate system. This knowledge is expressed using symbolic (qualitative) and not numerical (quantitative) methods. For instance, north and southeast are cardinal direction relationships. Such relationships are used to describe and constrain the relative positions of objects and can be used to pose queries such as “Find all objects a, b, and c such that a is north of b and b is southeast of c.”

Historical Background

Qualitative spatial relationships (QSR) approach common sense knowledge and reasoning about space using symbolic rather than numerical methods [5]. QSR has found applications in many diverse scientific areas such as geographic information systems, artificial intelligence, databases, and multimedia. Most researchers in QSR have concentrated on the three main...

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   4,499.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD   6,499.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Recommended Reading

  1. Cicerone S, Di Felice P. Cardinal directions between spatial objects: the pairwise-consistency problem. Inf Sci. 2004;164(1–4):165–88.

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  2. Clementini E, Billen R. Modeling and computing ternary projective relations between regions. IEEE Trans Knowl Data Eng. 2006;18(6):799–814.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Freksa C. Using orientation information for qualitative spatial reasoning. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on Spatial Information Theory; 1992. p. 162–78.

    Google Scholar 

  4. Goyal R. Similarity assessment for cardinal directions between extended spatial objects. PhD Thesis, Department of Spatial Information Science and Engineering, University of Maine; 2000.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Hernández D. Qualitative representation of spatial knowledge. LNCS, vol. 804. Berlin: Springer; 1994.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  6. Ligozat G. Reasoning about cardinal directions. J Visual Lang Comput. 1998;9(1):23–44.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Liu W, Li S. Reasoning about cardinal directions between extended objects: the NP-hardness result. Artif Intell. 2011;175(18): 2155–69.

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  8. Liu W, Zhang X, Li S, Ying M. Reasoning about cardinal directions between extended objects. Artif Intell. 2010;174(12–13):951–83

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  9. Mukerjee A, Joe G. A qualitative model for space. In: Proceedings of 7th National Conference on AI; 1990. p. 721–7.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Papadias D. Relation-based representation of spatial knowledge. PhD Thesis, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National Technical University of Athens; 1994.

    Google Scholar 

  11. Peuquet DJ, Ci-Xiang Z. An algorithm to determine the directional relationship between arbitrarily-shaped polygons in the plane. Pattern Recognit. 1987;20(1):65–74.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Skiadopoulos S, Koubarakis M. Composing cardinal direction relations. Artif Intell. 2004;152(2):143–71

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  13. Skiadopoulos S, Koubarakis M. On the consistency of cardinal directions constraints. Artif Intell. 2005;163(1):91–135.

    Article  MathSciNet  MATH  Google Scholar 

  14. Skiadopoulos S, Giannoukos C, Sarkas N, Vassiliadis P, Sellis T, Koubarakis M. Computing and managing cardinal direction relations. IEEE Trans Knowl Data Eng. 2005;17(12):1610–23.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Skiadopoulos S, Sarkas N, Sellis T, Koubarakis M. A family of directional relation models for extended objects. IEEE Trans Knowl Data Eng. 2007;19(8):1116–30

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Peloponnese, Tripoli, Greece

    Spiros Skiadopoulos

Authors
  1. Spiros Skiadopoulos
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Spiros Skiadopoulos .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Ling Liu

  2. University of Waterloo School of Computer Science, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. Tamer Özsu

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature

About this entry

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this entry

Skiadopoulos, S. (2018). Cardinal Direction Relationships. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8265-9_45

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation