Spatial and Temporal Reasoning

Qualitative reasoning about space and time - reasoning at the human level - promises to become a fundamental aspect of future systems that will accompany us in daily activity. This work gives a picture of current research in qualitative reasoning about space and time, focusing on both representational and computational issues. It emphasizes some major lines of development in this multifaceted area. The book shows some common ground and a novel combination of spatial and temporal aspects of qualitative reasoning. Topics covered include: spatial representation and reasoning; research in temporal reasoning; the ontological status of spatial entities; the theory of reasoning with qualitative relations about regions; the spatial needs of geographical information systems; and the linguistic expression of spatial relations.