A Topology-based Semantic Location Model for Indoor
Applications
Dandan Li
Department of Computer Science and
Engineering
Hong Kong University of Science and
Technology
Clear Water Bay, Hong Kong
ddli@cse.ust.hk
ABSTRACT
Location-based services (LBSs) play more and more impor-
tant roles in our daily life with the prevalence of mobile
devices and the internet. Location modeling is a signif-
icant research topic in LBSs, which is needed to provide
a well-defined representation of location knowledge for lo-
cation browsing, navigation and query processing. In this
paper, we propose that a topological structure can be at-
tached to an exit-location space model, which can preserve
the topology and distance semantics between locations (ex-
its). The Q-analysis developed by R. H. Atkin is used to
analyze the semantic information of the model. Compared
with those existing models which only reveal the relation-
ships between two entities, this novel model can provide the
analysis of n-ary relationships (i.e., the relations among n en-
tities) from both local and global viewpoints. Moreover, by
using the rich structures obtained from the topological anal-
ysis, we define a semantic distance which can support more
meaningful navigation and queries on complicated indoor
environments. Examples are described in detail to demon-
strate the effectiveness of our model.
Categories and Subject Descriptors
H.2 [Information Systems]: Database Management; H.3.2
[Information Storage and Retrieval]: Content Analy-
sis and Indexing; H.3.3 [Information Storage and Re-
trieval]: Information Search and Retrieval.
General Terms
Algorithms and Theory.
Keywords
Semantic Location Model, Topology, Q-analysis, Connec-
tiveness, Simplicial Family.
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permission and/or a fee.
ACM GIS ’08 , November 5-7, 2008. Irvine, CA, USA.
(c) 2008 ACM ISBN 978-1-60558-323-5/08/11...$5.00.
Dik Lun Lee
Department of Computer Science and
Engineering
Hong Kong University of Science and
Technology
Clear Water Bay, Hong Kong
dlee@cse.ust.hk
1. INTRODUCTION
Location based services (LBSs) are quickly growing in
prevalence with the advances of wireless communication and
mobile devices. Facing sophisticated applications, such as
location-based instant messaging and location-based alerts,
LBSs are expected to provide more intelligent services for
large user community. Location model is an essential part
of location aware applications, which requires the represen-
tation of location knowledge to be understandable and ca-
pable of capturing the rich semantics of the physical world.
Much research has been demanded and carried out in de-
veloping location models to describe the physical space and
properties of the objects contained in it.
In this paper, we focus on designing a semantic loca-
tion model for indoor applications. Compared with out-
door environments, the indoor environments are inherently
diverse and much more highly structured. In general, an
outdoor environment can be clearly described by the univer-
sal longitude-latitude-altitude coordinate system. However,
this coordinate system is not really suitable for indoor envi-
ronments since each indoor environment has its own way to
describe its locations which have various contexts. There-
fore, the location model with rich structures is needed for
indoor applications which can capture complicated relation-
ships among locations, such as the type of a location (room
or corridor), the connective structure of n locations, etc.
We propose in this paper the use of Q-analysis devised by
R. H. Atkin to semantic location model for indoor applica-
tions. The indoor space is modeled by two types of entities:
locations and exits, where a location is a bounded geometric
area with one or more exits and an exit is a boundary point
through which a user can leave or enter a location [28][20].
Based on this model, we construct an exit-location matrix
A, of which the elements aij are only one of the two val-
ues 1 and 0, with 1 (respectively 0) indicating the presence
(respectively absence) of the ith exit in the jth location.
Hence this matrix is an incidence matrix. A simplex, which
is a basic object in the study of algebraic topology, is at-
tached to each column of the incidence matrix, and then
the collection of these simplexes forms a simplicial family.
The Q-analysis is applied to analyze the topological struc-
ture of the location model, which is a technique of multidi-
mensional data analysis that makes us observe the semantic
structure of the indoor space from both local and global per-
spectives. In comparison with existing symbolic models, the
Q-analysis method is like a microscope and therefore makes
us do much deeper investigations into structures of an in-
door environment. Our topology-based model can reveal
the n-ary relationships (i.e., the relations among n entities)
such as hole, star and hub, as well as basic relationships be-
tween two entities, such as containment and connectedness.
Furthermore, by using the rich structures obtained from the
topological analysis, a semantic distance can be defined to
support more meaningful navigation and queries on compli-
cated indoor environments.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2
discusses the related work on modeling locations. Section 3
reviews the basic concepts of algebraic topology which are
the foundations of the core subjects of the paper. In Sec-
tion 4, we first represent the indoor space as an exit-location
matrix, and then build the topological location model by at-
taching the mathematical structure of simplex to each col-
umn/row of the matrix. Based on this model, some topolog-
ical characteristics are derived to reveal semantic relation-
ships among locations. By using the information obtained
from the topological analysis, we explore the potential ap-
plications of the model and give a comparison analysis of the
new model and existing location models in Section 5. The
last section summarizes the results obtained in this paper
and discusses directions for future work.
2. RELATED WORK
This section will give an overview of existing location mod-
els, which can be mainly classified into symbolic and geomet-
ric models [29][9].
In a symbolic location model, all objects are represented
as symbols and referred to by names. Based on the inclusion
relation between two sets, these symbols can be divided into
sets and subsets, and then form a hierarchical structure,
such as a tree or a lattice [20][26][12][25]. A representa-
tive example of symbolic models is the semantic location
model presented by Brumitt and Shafer [10]. The model
is not a geometric model since it can represent containment
and connectedness relationships within a space and not with
any specific geometric position of the object in that space.
Moreover, it has a lattice structure and a friendly naming
system, which allow a person to perform queries according
to semantic information of symbols. The prime advantage
of symbolic models is that they have clear representation
of spatial relationships with semantic information which is
easily understandable for humans. However, it is a heavy
cost to construct and maintain symbolic models manually.
In a geometric location model, the physical space is rep-
resented as the Euclidean space and the objects therein are
represented as points, lines, regions or volumes in the Eu-
clidean space. Each object in the geometric model is de-
scribed by the set of coordinates defined in the Euclidean
space. Distance between two objects can be calculated based
on their coordinates. There are no set inclusion relation-
ships between two objects like the above symbolic models.
A well known application based on the geometric model is
the GPS coordinate system, where locations are described
by the universal longitude-latitude-altitude coordinate sys-
tem [26][24][29]. Geometric models have the following ad-
vantages: they provide accurate position representation for
objects and support more flexible ways to retrieve location
information. However, they have weak structures and can
not reflect well semantic relationships among objects.
In fact, symbolic and geometric models have complemen-
tary benefits and drawbacks [24]. To overcome their weak-
nesses, hybrid location models are proposed by [29][24][12],
which are combinations of symbolic and geometric models.
The common basic idea under these hybrid models is that
objects are organized in a hierarchy in which every level
is a refinement of its previous and then each object in the
hierarchy is given its own coordinate system [26]. More-
over, coordinate systems of subspaces and superspaces can
be transformed between two spaces [24].
Pradhan [34] introduced a semantic representation of ob-
jects, which is totally different from symbolic and geometric
representations. The semantic representation provides the
contextual information of an object, which can characterize
the situation around the object [36]. Another semantic loca-
tion model for indoor navigation was developed by Hu and
Lee [19][20]. The model consists of two types of entities: lo-
cation and exit. It is actually a graph-based symbolic model,
but it can be derived from the geometric representation of
the indoor space [38][28]. The hierarchical structure of the
model is consistent with human cognition during navigation
and therefore it is more suitable for display on mobile de-
vices than a plain floor plan. However, this model can not
fully support object moving and can deal with only one type
of relation “reachability” [28].
Further related work in this direction includes Ye et al.
[38] who proposed a unified space model for more complex
environment based on lattice and graph models, as well as
O’Connell et al. [32], Pederson [33] and Schlieder et al. [35]
who build models for mobile objects or users.
3. MATHEMATICAL FOUNDATIONS
Q-analysis proposed by R. H. Atkin (standard references
are [3][5][6][1][2][4]) is a technique of multidimensional data
analysis, which makes us observe the space from both lo-
cal and global perspectives. Data structures are revealed
by techniques of algebraic topology, which impose noth-
ing on the data and “let the data speak for themselves”
[8][16]. Compared with the theories of graph and network,
Q-analysis can explore n-ary relationships (i.e., the relation-
ships among n entities) as well as the relationships between
two things, which are more important for some practical
problems [30][13]. Q-analysis has been successfully applied
to many fields, such as geographical studies [8], social and
planning sciences [1][2][4][7][17], mass media [18], artificial
intelligence [21][37], information retrieval [11][27][30][31], data-
base interaction [22], spatial databases [23][14], and so forth.
The followings are the basic concepts of algebraic topol-
ogy, including simplex, simplicial family, and Q-analysis which
are foundations of the core subjects of the paper [31][30].
A simplex is a basic element of algebraic topology, and
every simplex has a dimension. A 0-dimensional simplex is
a point in the Euclidean space IRN , a 1-simplex is a line
segment joining two points and a 2-simplex is a triangle.
Figure 1 shows four simplexes of dimension k = 0, 1, 2, and
3, respectively. The formal definition is given as follows.
Definition 1. Let v0 , v1 , . . . , vk be k + 1 points of IRN
in general position (i.e., the vectors − v− → −−→ −−→
0 v1 , v0 v2 , . . . , v0 vk are
linearly independent). We denote by σ k = (v0 , v1 , . . . , vk )
the smallest convex set spanned by these points. We call σ k
a simplex of dimension k (or a k-simplex) and v0 , v1 , . . . , vk
the vertices of the simplex. A q-simplex spanned by a subset
of these vertices is called a q-face of σ k . We use the notation

Figure 1: From left to right—simplexes of respective
dimensions 0, 1, 2, and 3.
(i) (ii)
Figure 2: (i) A simplicial family. (ii) Not a simplicial
family.
. to denote the face relation, which is a partial order on any
set of simplexes.
If we splice some simplexes together, then they can form
a larger object.
Definition 2. Two simplexes σ1m and σ2n in IRN are prop-
erly joined if either they do not intersect or their intersec-
p
tion σ1∩2 = σ1m ∩ σ2n , p ≤ m ≤ n, is a face of both σ1m and
n
σ2 . A simplicial family is a finite collection Σ of sim-
plexes which are properly joined. The dimension of Σ is
the highest dimension of the simplexes in Σ and is denoted
dimΣ.
Figure 2 shows two collections of simplexes, one is a sim-
plicial family and the other is not.
“Nearness” and “connectiveness” are important relation-
ships in a simplicial family, which are defined as follows:
Definition 3. Let Σ be a simplicial family and d is the
highest dimension of the simplexes in Σ. Let 0 ≤ q ≤ d be
an integer. We call two simplexes σa and σb in Σ q-near if
they have a common q-face. We call σa and σb q-connected
if there exists a sequence
σ1 , σ2 , . . . , σj (1)
of distinct simplexes of Σ, such that σ1 = σa , σj = σb , and
σi is qi -near to σi+1 for all 1 ≤ i ≤ j − 1, 0 ≤ qi ≤ d an
integer, and q = min{qi }. We call the sequence (1) a q-
chain Cab from σa to σb and the number (j − 1) the length of
Cab , denoted by l(Cab ). For all possible q-chains connecting
σa to σb with the same length L, we call the chain with the
maximum value of q = q ∗ the maximal L-chain, denoted by
∗
Cab (L). We say that σa and σb are q ∗ -connected if they are
connected by a maximal chain.
The relation “is q-connected to” on a simplicial family Σ
obeys the following three conditions: “reflexivity”, “symme-
try” and “transitivity”, therefore it is an equivalence rela-
tion, which is represented as rq . We have the following “Q-
analysis” structure on a simplicial family.
Definition 4. The relation “is q-connected to” on a sim-
plicial family Σ, is an equivalence relation which is de-
noted rq . Let Σq be the set of simplexes in Σ with dimension
greater than or equal to q, where q = 0, 1, . . . , dimΣ. Then
rq partitions Σq into equivalence classes of q-connected sim-
plexes. These equivalence classes are called the q-connected
components of Σ. Qq denotes the number of q-connected
components in Σ. The determination of the components and
Qq for each value of q is termed a Q-analysis of Σ.
4. A TOPOLOGY-BASED SEMANTIC LO-
CATION MODEL
In this section, we build a topology-based semantic lo-
cation model for indoor applications and analyze the char-
acteristics of its topological structure to reveal the latent
semantic relationships among objects.
4.1 Modeling the Indoor Space
The indoor environment we consider is composed of two
type of entities, including locations and exits. Here, a loca-
tion is defined as a bounded geometric area with one or more
exits and an exit is a boundary point through which a user
can leave or enter a location [28][20]. We then construct
an exit-location matrix A = [aij ], where the elements aij
are only one of the two values 1 and 0, with 1 (respectively
0) indicating the presence (respectively absence) of the ith
exit in the jth location. Based on the above mathematical
foundations, we can attach each location vector with a sim-
plex, then the collection of locations form a simplicial fam-
ily. Therefore semantic information among locations may
be investigated comprehensively in terms of this topologi-
cal model. The following simple example gives a detailed
explanation for the modeling process.
Example 1. Figure 3 shows a small area of a building,
which consists of 4 rooms(R), 1 corridor(C), and 6 exits(e).
R1 , R2 , R3 , R4 and C are locations, and e1 , e2 , · · · , e6 are
exits. Table 1 gives the 6×5 exit-location matrix correspond-
ing to Figure 3.
Observing the column R1 of the exit-location matrix, the
row e1 contains a “1” and the other rows contain “0”. We
0
associate with R1 a 0-simplex σ(R 1)
= (e1 ). In a similar way
we obtain the following simplexes for the remaining columns:
1
σ(R = (e2 , e3 ),
2)
1
σ(R 3)
= (e5 , e6 ),
1
(2)
σ(R 4)
= (e4 , e5 ),
3
σ(C) = (e1 , e2 , e4 , e6 ).
From Figure 4, we can see that exits are modeled by ver-
tices, locations are represented as simplexes and the five
location simplexes form a simplicial family.
 Strength Length Chain
R1 to R2 1 2 R1 → C → R2
R3 to R2 1 2 R3 → C → R2
R4 to C 1 1 R4 → C
R1 R2 e3
Table 2: Connective strength and length in Example
e1 e2 1.
C
e6 e4
4.2 Mining Semantic Relationships within the
R3 e5 Topological Model
R4
The semantic information of an entity is any information
that can be used to characterize the situation around the
Figure 3: A small area of a building. entity. In general, the types of entities in an indoor envi-
ronment are more diverse than those in an outdoor envi-
ronment. Therefore, an indoor environment has more abun-
dant semantic information. In this paper, we consider two
fundamental semantics: semantic relationships and seman-
tic distance between entities. In the following part, we ex-
plore semantic relationships among locations based on our
topological location model. Compared with a graph-based
model, the topological model can reveal not only the binary
relations between two entities but also the relations among
R1 R2 R3 R4 C n entities by the topological characteristics given as below.
e1 1 0 0 0 1 Moreover, each location in the graph model is only repre-
e2 0 1 0 0 1 sented by a node and there is no other information about
e3 0 1 0 0 0 the location, but in the topological model, each location is
e4 0 0 0 1 1 represented by a simplex with a dimension, and therefore
e5 0 0 1 1 0 the latter can provide more elaborate information. For ex-
e6 0 0 1 0 1 ample, the graph model can only tell us that a location is
connected to the other location, but the topological model
can describe further how they are connected to each other.
Table 1: The exit-location matrix corresponding to In our model, each location is represented as a simplex
Figure 3. while each exit as a vertex. The dimension of the sim-
plex plus 1 is equal to the number of exits that a location
has. The connective relationship between two locations is
described by the following characteristics of the chain con-
necting the two location simplexes.

4.2.1 Connective Strength and Connective Length

We assume that the weight of each edge in a simplex fam-
0 ily is equal and is set to 1 in the whole paper. In other
σR 1 cases positive real number may be assigned to each edge to
e1 reflect the distance between two exits. Suppose two location
simplexes σa and σb are connected by a q-chain with length
e3 L in terms of the definition 3, then the connective strength
of the two locations is defined as q + 1 and the connective
length is L.
e6 e2
1
σR 2
Example 2. Referring to Figures 3 and 4 in Example 1,
we have the following results in Table 2. Since R1 is con-
hole
3 nected to R2 by the chain {R1 , C, R2 }, the connective length
1 e4 σC
σR 3
is equal to 2. Furthermore, R1 and C are 0-connected and
C and R2 are also 0-connected, and therefore R1 and R2 are
e5 0-connected and the connective strength is equal to 1. Other
1
σR results in Table 2 can be obtained in a similar way.
4
These results tell us that a person must pass through the
Figure 4: The simplexes generated by columns of
location C (a corridor) if he or she wants to arrive at the
the matrix 1.
location R2 from the location R1 or R3 , but he or she can
get to the corridor C directly from the location R1 , R3 or
R4 .
The complete pseudo-code for calculating “connective stre-
ngth” and “connective length” between location a and other
locations is given as below. The basic idea is to find those
locations that are connected to location a at the first level
(with length 1), and then find connections at higher levels
step by step.

Algorithm 1 Algorithm for Computing Connective L4 L2

Strength and Length. e2
Input: An m-dimensional vector a, which is the represen- e3 e4
tation of a location with respect to m exits; e5
An m × n matrix A, which is the exit-location matrix of
other n location column vectors. L3 e1 L1
Output: A vector Q, which records the connective strength
between location a and other locations;
A vector L recording the connective length between lo-
cation a and other locations. Figure 5: An exit-location area in a building.
1: C = a, Ā = A, k = 1; {k is the connection length}
2: while C T Ā is not a zero matrix do
3: B = C T Ā;
4: I = i, ∃j, such thatB(j, i) >= 1; {find location i in Ā
that connects to location j in C.}
5: L(i) = k, ∀i ∈ I; {mark the connection length for the
found locations in L.}
6: Q(i) = mink {maxj B(j, i)}, ∀i ∈ I; {mark the connec-
tive strength for the found locations in Q.}
7: C = {Ā(:, i), i ∈ I}; Ā ← Ā \ C; k = k + 1 {seper-
ate the locations in Ā into two sets; and increase the
connection length.} L1 L2 L3 L4
8: end while e1 1 0 1 0
e2 0 1 0 1
e3 1 1 0 0
e4 1 1 0 0
4.2.2 Hole
0 1 3
e5 0 0 1 1
Observing Figure 4, we see that σR 1
, σR 2
and σC form
3 1 1
a tightly knitted group whereas σC , σR3 and σR4 are rela-
tively isolated. The reason is that there is an empty region Table 3: The exit-location matrix corresponding to
3 1 1
within the structure constructed by σC , σR 3
and σR 4
. An Figure 5.
empty region in a simplicial family is termed a hole. The
hole structure is formed in Figure 4 because the exits e4 , e5
and e6 do not appear simultaneously in one location. The
hole structure in an indoor environment tends to restrict
the walking route of a mobile person. The following exam-
ple gives a good demonstration of the fact.

Example 3. Figure 5 is another small area of a building.

The corresponding exit-location matrix is given in Table 3.
We attach each location column vector with a simplex then
we get the simplicial family in Figure 6. Since there does e3
2
not exist a location which includes all four exits e1 , e2 , e4 2 σL
σL 2
1

and e5 , they form a hole structure. Under this obstacle, a

person can not get to the exit e2 from the exit e1 directly and e4
must go through two locations {L3 , L4 } or {L1 , L2 }.
e2 hole
e1

1 e5
The computation of a hole structure is related to the σL 4
1
σL 3
mathematical concept “homology group”, which is beyond
the scope of the knowledge of this paper. Figure 6: Location simplicial family generated by
columns of the Table 3.
4.2.3 Q-analysis of a Simplicial Family
Based on Definition 4, we know that Q-analysis is a tech-
nique of multidimensional data analysis and makes us ob-
serve a simplicial family from both local and global angles.
The following example gives a detailed illustration.
 Example 4. Table 4 gives the Q-analysis result of the
simplicial family in Example 3 according to Definition 4 and e2
Algorithm 1. Since the highest dimension of location sim- e3 e5
plexes is 2, the Q-analysis of the simplicial family has 3
levels, q = 0, 1, 2 respectively. The level q = 2 consists of L1 e1
L2
those simplexes with dimension greater than or equal to 2, e4
2 2 2
so this level contains two simplexes σL and σL . Since σL
2
1 2 1
L3
and σL2 are not 2-connected to each other but 2-connected
2 2
to itself respectively by a chain of length zero, σL 1
and σL 2
forms two 2-connected components. Next, at the level q = 1,
1 1 2
two more location simplexes σL3 and σL4 come in. σL1 and Figure 7: An exit-location area in a building.
2
σL 2
are 1-connected by a chain of length 1 because they have
two common exits e3 and e4 , therefore they are merged to e3
1
form a 1-connected component at the level q = 1. σL 3
and
1
σL4 both are 1-connected to itself and thus form two one- e5
member components. All the four location simplexes form a
larger 0-connected component at the level q = 0 since σL 2
is e2
1
1
2 2 1 1
1-connected to σL2 , σL2 is 0-connected to σL4 , and σL4 is 0- σL 3

connected to σL 1
. Moreover, the value Qq denotes the num- e1 e4
3
ber of q-connected components at each q-level. This structure 2
vector provides a measure of some of the global structure of a σL 2
2
simplicial family while each q-connected component captures σL 1
the local structure information of a simplicial family.
Figure 8: The simplexes corresponding to Figure 7.
Potential applications of the local and global information
are discussed in Section 5.
8, we have
4.2.4 Eccentricity ImpL1 (e) =
1
= 1;
In a building, an exit is a connector between two locations 1
or a boundary point opening into the outside of the build-
ing. For each location, the importance of its exits is different. 2 1
ImpL2 (e) = = ;
For example, if a location has only one exit, then this exit 4 2
is very important for the location since it is the only entity
2
connecting this location to others, while if a location has ImpL3 (e) =
.
many exits and some of them can open simultaneously into 3
the other location, then the importance of its exits is small. We can see that the importance of exit e1 for location L1
This information is important for a mobile user. For exam- gets the maximum value since it is the only exit leaving or
ple, a person may estimate how many ways he/she has to entering location L1 .
leave a location through its exits based on this information.
We will define a measure to quantify the above information.
Given a simplicial family, eccentricity (ecc) of a simplex We give the complete pseudo-code for computing “impor-
has been devised to measure the extent to which the simplex tance” of exits as below.
is integrated into the simplicial family [3]. The formula for
calculating eccentricity of a simplex σ is given by
4.2.5 Star and Hub
In our location model, rooms and corridors are all repre-
q̂ − q̌ sented as location simplexes. It is valuable to differentiate
ecc(σ) = , (3)
q̂ + 1 types of locations in an indoor environment since it may
where q̂ is called top-q and denotes the dimension of simplex aid in limiting queries about locations [10]. The following
σ, and q̌ is called bottom-q and is the largest number of definitions † and proposition can help us solve this problem.
vertices minus 1 that σ shares with any simplex. Definition 5. Let the star of a simplex σ in a simplicial
Based on Equation 3, we can calculate the eccentricity of family K be defined as
each location simplex. Let e be the exit of location L, then
0 0 0
the importance of exit e for location L (denoted by ImpL (e)) star(σ) = {σ |σ is q-near to σ, σ ∈ K}; (5)
is defined as
that is,
q̌ + 1
ImpL (e) = 1 − ecc(σL ) = . (4) 0 0 0
q̂ + 1 star(σ) = {σ |σ ∩ σ . σ, σ ∈ K}. (6)
The range of importance measure is at the interval [0, 1]. Definition 6. Let fi , i = 1, 2, . . . , s be the subsets of the
The larger the value is, the more important the exit for its simplexes of K. Let F be a set of these subsets, that is,
location is.
†
We have tailored the original definition of “star” in Q-
Example 5. Considering the exits in Figure 7 and Figure analysis to fit our present application.
 Dimension Number of components
at level q List of components
q Qq
2 2 1 1
0 1 {σL 1
, σL 2
, σL 3
, σL 4
}
2 2 1 1
1 3 {σL1 , σL2 } {σL3 } {σL 4
}
2 2
2 2 {σL 1
} {σL 2
}

Table 4: Q-analysis of the simplicial family in Example 3.

Algorithm 2 Algorithm for computing the importance of σe12

exits. L4
Input: an m × n exit-location matrix A.
L2 σe15
Output: an n-dimensional vector Imp recording the im-
hole
portance of the exits for each location.
1: L = AT A; σe13 , σe14 L3
2: Imp = 0n×1 ;
3: q̌ = maxj=2 to n L1,j − 1; L1
4: q̂ = L1,1 − 1; σe11
5: Imp1 = (q̌ + 1)/(q̂ + 1);
6: for i = 2 to n-1 do Figure 9: Exit simplicial family generated by rows
7: q̌ = max(maxj=1 to i-1 Li,j , maxj=i+1 to n Li,j ) − 1; of the Table 3.
8: q̂ = Li,i − 1;
9: Impi = (q̌ + 1)/(q̂ + 1);
10: end for
11: for i = dim:dim do also associate each exit row vector with a simplex, then they
12: q̌ = maxj=1 to i-1 Li,j − 1; form an exit simplicial family. We call this characteristic the
13: q̂ = Li,i − 1; duality of the simplicial family. The exit simplicial family
14: Impi = (q̌ + 1)/(q̂ + 1); of Example 3 is given by Figure 9. We discuss its possible
15: end for functions in processing queries in the following section.

F = {f1 , f2 , . . . , fs }. Then we define hub(F) to be the in-

tersection of all elements in F :
\
s 5. POTENTIAL APPLICATIONS AND COM-
hub(F ) = fi . (7)
i=1,fi ∈F
PARISON ANALYSIS
We have given a detailed description of the topology-based
Based on the definitions of “star” and “hub” in a simpli- location model in the above section. Now, two natural ques-
cial family, we can show that a corridor simplex could be tions arise: what are the potential applications that this new
identified by its relation with other room simplexes. model can support? And what are the main differences be-
tween this model and the existing location models? In this
Proposition 1. A corridor simplex is one element in the section, we will answer these questions preliminarily with
hub of the stars of more than one room simplexes. some small examples.
We can get an intuitive feeling about the proposition from
the following validation process for Figure 3. In Example 5.1 Potential Applications
1, the stars of four room simplexes are listed respectively as The topology-based location model can reveal some hid-
follows: den structures among locations, such as, connective strength,
star(σR1 ) = {σR1 , σC }, connective length, hole structure, Q-analysis and dual struc-
star(σR2 ) = {σR2 , σC }, ture. Their potential applications are discussed as follows.
Application Example 1: Semantic Distance. For the gen-
star(σR3 ) = {σR3 , σR4 , σC }, eral navigation and nearest neighbor query tasks, we are
star(σR4 ) = {σR3 , σR4 , σC }. only interested in the shortest path and the shortest distance
between two objects. However, indoor environments are in-
Let F = {star(σR1 ), star(σR2 ), star(σR3 ), star(σR4 )}. Then
trinsically complicated. Both the connective strength and
we have
connective length between two locations may affect a per-
hub(F ) = star(σR1 ) ∩ star(σR2 ) ∩ star(σR3 ) ∩ star(σR4 ) son’s travel between them. Therefore, the semantic distance
= {σC }. should be considered before navigation, which can capture
not only the real distance information but also the structure
4.2.6 The Dual Structure information between two locations. Based on the topologi-
In previous examples, we attach each location column vec- cal model, we define the Connective Degree (CD) between
tor of an exit-location matrix with a simplex. In fact, we can two locations as follows, which is used to measure how easy

a person can get from one location to another location,
2 ∗ Strength(Loi , Loj )
CD(Loi , Loj ) = ∗ βL,
(dim(Loi ) + 1) + (dim(Loj ) + 1)
(8)
where Strength(·, ·) and L represent the connective strength
and length between two locations respectively; dim(·) de-
notes the dimension of a location; β is a parameter at the
interval [0, 1] which regulates the function of the chain length
L in the measure. This idea is partially inspired by the
work of Prasanna Ganesan et.al [15] and Dandan Li et. al
[31][30]. According to this definition, we see that the larger
the connective degree is, the easier the locations can be gone
through. This conclusion is consistent with our intuition
since it meets the following objective facts: the location
with high dimension means that it has many exits, which
makes it difficult for a person to choose a right exit lead-
ing to the destination. That is why we consider this factor
as the denominator of Equation 8. The large connective
strength between two locations implies that the number of
the exits connecting them is great, and thus provides more
paths for a person to arrive at the destination and makes
the travel easier. Furthermore, since the larger the length is
the more difficult the travel is, we set the parameter β at the
interval [0, 1]. The following small example gives a further
explanation of Equation 8.
Example 6. Observing Figure 10 that is the simplicial
family corresponding to the area in Figure 5. Now a person
is standing at exit e1 and he wants to get to exit e2 . The
question is which path is the optimal one for him.
From Figure 10, we know that there are two possible navi-
gation routes from e1 to e2 , one is through the locations σL2
1
2 1 1 Some example questions that arise might be:
and σL2 , the other one is through the locations σL3 and σL4 .
The lengths of the two paths are equal, but their difference
exists in the connective strength. If we set the parameter
β = 21 , then we can get
2∗2 1 1
CD(Lo1 , Lo2 ) = ∗ ( )1 = , (9)
3+3 2 3
and
2∗1 1 1
CD(Lo3 , Lo4 ) = ∗ ( )1 = . (10)
2+2 2 4
According to this results, if the distances of these paths are
comparable, then the optimal path we think should be that
2 2
with σL 1
and σL 2
since the larger connective degree means
that the person can be easier to pass through the boundary
of two locations. In particular, this kind of decision is more
suitable for mobile environment. For example, suppose both
paths have huge flowing crowds, the person in the path with
2 2
σL 1
and σL 2
can choose an appropriate exit going through
the location boundary according to the temporal condition,
however the other path provides the only one choice.
Application Example 2: Structure Analysis. From the
multilevel structure of Q-analysis, we can understand an
indoor environment comprehensively. Each connected com-
ponent at different levels provides us with the local connec-
tion information between two locations, including connective
strength and connective length. Moreover, the structure vec-
tor Qq in Q-analysis indicates the complexity of the global
structure of a space. Suppose that there are two floors in a
e3
2
2 σL
σL 1
2
e4
e2 hole
e1
1 e5
σL 1
σL
4
3
Figure 10: The simplexes generated by columns of
the Table 3.
building, and in the first floor the simplicial family forms a
single connected component at a relatively high dimensional
level whereas in the second floor the structure is composed of
several connected component even at the lower level. Then
we know that the connective structure in the first floor is
more complicated than that in the second floor and a per-
son may cost more energy to find the optimal route in the
first floor.
Application Example 3: Different queries on Dual struc-
tures. The exit simplicial family in Figure 9 and the location
simplicial family in Figure 6 represent a dual structure of the
exit-location matrix (Table 3). For the exit simplicial family,
each location is represented by a vertex and each exit is a
simplex, whereas for the location simplicial family, each exit
is a vertex and each location is denoted by a simplex. The
dual simplicial families reveal the connective structure infor-
mation in the same indoor environment from two different
angles and thus can be used to deal with different queries.
On the location simplicial family (Figure 6)
• Which exit of location 2 is nearest to the exit 5 of location
3?
• Is it possible for Joe to arrive at exit 2 directly from exit
1?
On the exit simplicial family (Figure 9)
• Which location might Joe pass through if he walks to lo-
cation 2 from location 3?
These three questions could be answered by both simplicial
families, but their efficiency is different.
5.2 Comparison Analysis
Existing location models can be classified into geometric
or symbolic model. A geometric model represents the phys-
ical space as a Euclidean space and the objects therein as
points, lines, shapes and volumes in the Euclidean space. In
our model, the exit and the location (room or corridor) com-
posed of line, shape, etc are replaced by vertex or simplex.
Therefore the topology-based model is symbolic in nature.
The set-based and graph-based models are two main types
of symbolic location models. The basic functions of location
models include position queries (P), nearest neighbor queries
(N), range queries and navigation (R). Based on the repre-
sentation of the location simplex and the nearness relation
given in Definition 3, the containment relation is supported
and therefore we can use the topology-based model to deal
with range queries, which is similar to the set-based model.
Since the graph-based model supports the definition of the
topological relation “connected to ” as well as the quanti-
 Supported queries
P R N
Set Good Good Basic
Graph Good Basic Good
Topology Good Good Good(Semantic)
Table 6: Comparison II of symbolic location models.
tative distance between locations, it is well-suited for near-
est neighbor queries as well as navigation. However, range
queries is not well supported by the graph-based model with
standard graph-based algorithms. On the other hand, with
our topology-based model, which mines the deep topolog-
ical properties of the graph, not only the ”connected to ”
relation but also the semantic distance can be captured, in
which the semantic distance comprises the structure infor-
mation as well as the real distance information between two
locations. Therefore, it could be more suitable for nearest
neighbor queries and navigation on the complicated indoor
environment than the graph-based model. Table 5 and Ta-
ble 6 summarize the properties of the set-based, graph-based
and topology-based location models. Detailed discussions
about the existing location models are given in [9].
We describe briefly the structures of graph theory and Q-
analysis here. A more comprehensive discussion is given in
[13] by Earl and Johnson. In essence, graph theory reveals
the binary relation between two things, whereas Q-analysis
method generalizes this idea to n-ary relations (i.e., the re-
lations among n things ), which is more important for many
practical problems. The graphical method has the advan-
tage of enabling us to take in the whole structure at a glance,
while the Q-analysis method provides us with a series of fil-
ters for observing the structures at various dimensional levels
[11]. The Q-analysis method is like a microscope and there-
fore makes us do much deeper investigations into structures
than the graph method.
6. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
In this paper, we build a topological semantic location
model for indoor applications based on an exit-location ma-
trix. Semantic relationships and semantic distance within
an indoor environment can be revealed by this novel model.
The Q-analysis method is used to analyze the semantic in-
formation of the model. Topological characteristics, such as
connectiveness, hole, eccentricity and star-hub, are defined
to model n-ary relationships among entities as well as basic
relationships between two entities. The connected compo-
nents and the structure vector in Q-analysis of a simplicial
family provide us with local and global angles to observe
the indoor space. Based on the information obtained by the
topological analysis, we explore the potential applications of
the model and give a comparison analysis of the new model
and existing location models.
In this paper, we apply algebraic topology to semantic lo-
cation model. The richness results in algebraic topology may
cast new light to developing location models for location-
based services. In the future, we are interested in further
exploring more useful information of the model that can
support the navigation and queries on complicated indoor
environments. We also plan to apply the model to large
scale location-based applications.
7. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This work was supported by grants 616005 and CA05/
06.EG03 from Hong Kong Research Grants Council. We
would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their in-
sightful comments and helpful suggestions for our prepara-
tion of the manuscript.
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