Modeling Spatial Relations Between Lines and Regions: Combining Formal Mathematical Models and Human Subjects Testing
David M Mark, Max J. Egenhofer · 2013
. This paper describes the results of a series of human-subjects experiments to test how people think about spatial relations between lines and regions. The experiments are centered on a formal model of topological spatial relations, called the 9-intersection. For unbranched lines and simplyconnected regions, this model identifies 19 different spatial relations. Subjects were presented with two or three geometrically-distinct drawings of each spatial relation (40 drawings in all), with the line and the region said to be a road and a park, respectively. In the first experiment, the task was to group the drawings so that the same phrase or sentence could be used to describe every situation in each group. A few subjects differentiated all 19 relations, but most identified 9 to 13 groups. Although there was a great deal of variation across subjects in the groups that were identified, the results confirm that the relations grouped by the 9-intersection model are the ones most o...