Modeling Topological Relations of Spatial Objects and Its Applications in GIS
空间目标的拓扑关系及其GIS应用分析

Topological relationship is one of the most important theoretical topics related to GIS modeling, and it plays a key role in many geo-technical fields such as spatial data modeling, spatial query, spatial analysis, spatial reasoning, and cartographic generalization. To motivate further research and applications of the theory, this paper reviews the formalisms and formal models of topological relations. First, the approaches that describe topological relations under certainty are briefly examined. Then the developing progress toward topological relations with uncertainties is explored in terms of research methodologies, including broad boundary approach, fuzzy set approach, random set approach, and rough set approach. Moreover, some applications of the theory in spatial query, spatial analysis and spatial reasoning, are basically introduced. Finally, several issues are highlighted for future investigations.