Region connection calculus explained

The region connection calculus (RCC) is intended to serve for qualitative spatial representation and reasoning. RCC abstractly describes regions (in Euclidean space, or in a topological space) by their possible relations to each other. RCC8 consists of 8 basic relations that are possible between two regions:

disconnected (DC)
externally connected (EC)
equal (EQ)
partially overlapping (PO)
tangential proper part (TPP)
tangential proper part inverse (TPPi)
non-tangential proper part (NTPP)
non-tangential proper part inverse (NTPPi)

From these basic relations, combinations can be built. For example, proper part (PP) is the union of TPP and NTPP.

Axioms

RCC is governed by two axioms.^[1]

for any region x, x connects with itself
for any region x, y, if x connects with y, y will connect with x

Remark on the axioms

The two axioms describe two features of the connection relation, but not the characteristic feature of the connect relation.^[2] For example, we can say that an object is less than 10 meters away from itself and that if object A is less than 10 meters away from object B, object B will be less than 10 meters away from object A. So, the relation 'less-than-10-meters' also satisfies the above two axioms, but does not talk about the connection relation in the intended sense of RCC.

Composition table

The composition table of RCC8 are as follows:

R2(b, c)→----R1(a, b)↓	DC	EC	PO	TPP	NTPP	TPPi	NTPPi	EQ
DC		DC, EC, PO, TPP, NTPP	DC, EC, PO, TPP, NTPP	DC, EC, PO, TPP, NTPP	DC, EC, PO, TPP, NTPP	DC	DC	DC
EC	DC, EC, PO, TPPi, NTPPi	DC, EC, PO, TPP, TPPi, EQ	DC, EC, PO, TPP, NTPP	EC, PO, TPP, NTPP	PO, TPP, NTPP	DC, EC	DC	EC
PO	DC, EC, PO, TPPi, NTPPi	DC, EC, PO, TPPi, NTPPi		PO, TPP, NTPP	PO, TPP, NTPP	DC, EC, PO, TPPi, NTPPi	DC, EC, PO, TPPi, NTPPi	PO
TPP	DC	DC, EC	DC, EC, PO, TPP, NTPP	TPP, NTPP	NTPP	DC, EC, PO, TPP, TPPi, EQ	DC, EC, PO, TPPi, NTPPi	TPP
NTPP	DC	DC	DC, EC, PO, TPP, NTPP	NTPP	NTPP	DC, EC, PO, TPP, NTPP		NTPP
TPPi	DC, EC, PO, TPPi, NTPPi	EC, PO, TPPi, NTPPi	PO, TPPi, NTPPi	PO, TPP, TPPi, EQ	PO, TPP, NTPP	TPPi, NTPPi	NTPPi	TPPi
NTPPi	DC, EC, PO, TPPi, NTPPi	PO, TPPi, NTPPi	PO, TPPi, NTPPi	PO, TPPi, NTPPi	PO, TPP, NTPP, TPPi, NTPPi, EQ	NTPPi	NTPPi	NTPPi
EQ	DC	EC	PO	TPP	NTPP	TPPi	NTPPi	EQ

"*" denotes the universal relation, no relation can be discarded.

Usage example: if a TPP b and b EC c, (row 4, column 2) of the table says that a DC c or a EC c.

Examples

The RCC8 calculus is intended for reasoning about spatial configurations. Consider the following example: two houses are connected via a road. Each house is located on an own property. The first house possibly touches the boundary of the property; the second one surely does not. What can we infer about the relation of the second property to the road?

The spatial configuration can be formalized in RCC8 as the following constraint network:

house1 DC house2 house1 property1 house1 property2 house1 EC road house2 property1 house2 NTPP property2 house2 EC road property1 property2 road property1 road property2

Using the RCC8 composition table and the path-consistency algorithm, we can refine the network in the following way: road property1 road property2

That is, the road either overlaps (PO) property2, or is a tangential proper part of it. But, if the road is a tangential proper part of property2, then the road can only be externally connected (EC) to property1. That is, road PO property1 is not possible when road TPP property2. This fact is not obvious, but can be deduced once we examine the consistent "singleton-labelings" of the constraint network. The following paragraph briefly describes singleton-labelings.

First, we note that the path-consistency algorithm will also reduce the possible properties between house2 and property1 from to just DC. So, the path-consistency algorithm leaves multiple possible constraints on 5 of the edges in the constraint network. Since each of the multiple constraints involves 2 constraints, we can reduce the network to 32 (2^5) possible unique constraint networks, each containing only single labels on each edge ("singleton labelings"). However, of the 32 possible singleton labelings, only 9 are consistent. (See qualreas for details.) Only one of the consistent singleton labelings has the edge road TPP property2 and the same labeling includes road EC property1.

Other versions of the region connection calculus include RCC5 (with only five basic relations - the distinction whether two regions touch each other are ignored) and RCC23 (which allows reasoning about convexity).

RCC8 use in GeoSPARQL

RCC8 has been partially implemented in GeoSPARQL as described below:

Implementations

GQR is a reasoner for RCC-5, RCC-8, and RCC-23 (as well as other calculi for spatial and temporal reasoning)
qualreas is a Python framework for qualitative reasoning over networks of relation algebras, such as RCC-8, Allen's interval algebra and more.

Bibliography

randell92. Randell, D.A.. Cui, Z. Cohn, A.G.. A spatial logic based on regions and connection. 3rd Int. Conf. on Knowledge Representation and Reasoning. Morgan Kaufmann. 1992. 165–176.
geo97. Qualitative Spatial Representation and Reasoning with the Region Connection Calculus. Anthony G. Cohn. Brandon Bennett. John Gooday. Micholas Mark Gotts. GeoInformatica. 1. 3. 275–316. 1997. 10.1023/A:1009712514511. 14841370 . .
Book: Renz, J. . renz. Qualitative Spatial Reasoning with Topological Information. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer Verlag. 2002. 2293. 10.1007/3-540-70736-0. 978-3-540-43346-0. 8236425 .
tdong. Tiansi . Dong . A Comment on RCC: From RCC to RCC⁺⁺. 41217909. Journal of Philosophical Logic. 34. 2. 319–352. 2008. 10.1007/s10992-007-9074-y. 6243376 . .

Notes and References

Randell et al. 1992
Dong 2008