Chapter 2 — Question 7

On page 106, we provided the (logical) definition of the ‘meets’ relationship. Provide
your version of the definitions of ‘covered by’ and ‘overlaps’. Explain why this set of to-
pological relationships between regions is also known as the four-intersection scheme.

Answer
The ‘covered by’ relationship is illustrated in Figure 2.14, top right. Here, the
green oval represents region A, the blue oval region B. Obviously, the interiors
of both regions intersect, thus their intersection is non-empty. (This explains
the first line of the formula below.) We can similarly express whether intersec-
tions of other combinations of interiors/boundaries intersect. The ‘covered by’
relationship can thus be defined as:

def
A covered by B = interior(A) ∩ interior(B) 6= ∅ ∧
boundary(A) ∩ boundary(B) 6= ∅ ∧
interior(A) ∩ boundary(B) = ∅ ∧
boundary(A) ∩ interior(B) 6= ∅.

The definition of the ‘overlaps’ relationship is not more difficult, but just
different:

def
A overlaps B = interior(A) ∩ interior(B) 6= ∅ ∧
boundary(A) ∩ boundary(B) 6= ∅ ∧
interior(A) ∩ boundary(B) 6= ∅ ∧
boundary(A) ∩ interior(B) 6= ∅.

The set of topological relationship between regions, as depicted in Figure 2.14,

is called the four-intersection scheme because it defines each relationship as a
combination of four intersections, namely all between boundary(A) and interior(A)
on the one hand, and boundary(B) and interior(B) on the other hand.

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