Map retrieval based on geometric spatial relations

Until now, many researchers have proposed spatial relations between geographical objects in the field of geographical information systems and spatial databases. However, these proposals have focused on binary relations to represent the features of geographical objects, but have not concentrated on the complexity among geographical objects. In this paper, we aim to model the complex structure among geographical objects. To represent the structure among geographical objects, we define the geometric spatial relation, which is composed of an overlapping relation, an adjoining relation, and a neighboring relation. Additionally, we discuss a retrieval function which finds similar locations by using a sketch as a query. In order to find locations, we generate a graph structure for representing the relationships among geographical objects using the three relations. We find a similar structure by comparing two graph structures. To judge the occurrence of a similar structure, we define the similarity which is calculated by correspondence among relations. The correspondence among relations is a value which shows the difference between a query and data. By using this similarity, we can find not only subgraphs but also similarity graphs. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electron Comm Jpn, 94(8): 27–36, 2011; Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI 10.1002/ecj.10345