Metrics and topologies for geographic space
Michael F. Worboys · 2001
This paper is motivated by the requirement for computer-based representations of geospatial information that parallel the structure of geographic space that humans apprehend. It is well known that such representations do not satisfy the conditions of a metric space. We consider distance and proximity relationships between entities in geographic spaces, and discuss some of the ways in which useful representations take us beyond mathematical metric spaces. We show that even though the underlying space does not satisfy the conditions for a metric space, it is still possible to induce neighbourhood topologies upon it.