Boolean connection algebras: A new approach to the Region-Connection Calculus

AbstractThe Region-Connection Calculus (RCC) is a well established formal system for qualitative spatial reasoning. It provides an axiomatization of space which takes regions as primitive, rather than as constructions from sets of points. The paper introduces Boolean connection algebras (BCAs), and proves that these structures are equivalent to models of the RCC axioms. BCAs permit a wealth of results from the theory of lattices and Boolean algebras to be applied to RCC. This is demonstrated by two theorems which provide constructions for BCAs from suitable distributive lattices. It is already well known that regular connected topological spaces yield models of RCC, but the theorems in this paper substantially generalize this result. Additionally, the lattice theoretic techniques used provide the first proof of this result which does not depend on the existence of points in regions