Spatio-temporal predicates

This paper investigates temporal changes of topological relationships and thereby integrates two important research areas: First, two-dimensional topological relationships that have been investigated quite intensively and, second, the change of spatial information over time. We investigate spatio-temporal predicates, which describe developments of well-known spatial topological relationships. A framework is developed in which spatio-temporal predicates can be obtained by temporal aggregation of elementary spatial predicates and sequential composition. We compare our framework with two other possible approaches: one is based on the observation that spatio-temporal objects correspond to three-dimensional spatial objects for which existing topological predicates can be exploited. The other approach is to consider possible transitions between spatial configurations. These considerations help to identify a canonical set of spatio-temporal predicates.