4SIM: A Novel Description Model for the Ternary Spatial Relation “Between” of Buildings

Natural language spatial relations are often ambiguous and polysemic. They are also pluralistic and subjective in nature. Their descriptive methods are crucial but difficult in cartography, geographic information science, and map generalization. “Between” is a context-concerned spatial concept which is widely used to describe the arrangement of spatial objects. It involves the spatial distribution of at least three spatial objects and describes a scenario in which one (or more) object(s) is surrounded by objects on both sides. Existing models based on RCC and the n-intersection model are mainly used to describe binary spatial logic and are inadequate in describing the “between” ternary relation effectively. At present, although existing models can describe and reason about such ternary spatial relations, their limitations still exist. The description capability of ternary spatial relations is unspecific and polysemic, and certain results are inconsistent with spatial cognition and perception and application requirements. Therefore, this paper proposes a 4 Sides Intersection Model (4SIM) to express the spatial relation among ternary buildings in detail. Theoretically, 4SIM can effectively describe 45 spatial relations among ternary objects through the topological distances among the four boundaries of the region formed by the intermediate object and the two adjacent objects. The 4SIM has been demonstrated to offer a superior degree of accuracy in the depiction of spatial relations in comparison to the extant RIM method, thus providing new possibilities for map generalization.