Treffer: Global Feature Schemes in Spatial and Temporal Reasoning.

This article investigates the distinction between local and global features in spatial and temporal reasoning. It analyses this dichotomy by considering qualitative shape descriptions. Shapes are important in a number of fields, such as in qualitative reasoning, and especially in spatial planning and vision. Current approaches are confined to describing local features while walking along the shapes' boundaries. Shapes exist, however, which cannot be distinguished by these methods even though there are obvious distinctions between them. We shall introduce the notion of a global feature scheme in order to compensate for the shortcomings of present techniques. This approach is then applied to a class of shapes which have previously been shown to be difficult to distinguish, and proves capable of telling them apart. The method is based on a representation of intersection-free relations which complements existing qualitative representations for which intersections are virtually fundamental. The conception of global feature schemes for shapes generalises to other relational systems for which global features are also of importance. That is, the result will be that every system of relations which distinguishes at least two modes of disconnection constitutes a global feature scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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