Week 2 formative Assessment
1. Which of the following is not a spatial relation that can be used in spatial
queries
Ans: Spatial autocorrelation
2. There is a GIS dataset of points of interest (POIs) in a region, and you
would like only those located within a pre-defined study area. How will you
translate it into a spatial query?
Ans:
Translating to spatial query involves identifying the two essential
components of the queries i.e. the reference feature and the target
feature.
The target feature in this case are the points of interest (POI) and the
reference feature is the predefined reference area.
The relationship between target and reference feature is a critical
component of the queries. They are widely deployed as spatial conditions
in spatial queries by specifying how two or more spatial objects are related
or connected in space (Carniel, 2024, p. 1868).
The relationship in this case, is a topological relationship to show all points
of interest (POI) contained within the predefined area of studies.
3. What does the spatial information in a GIS mainly consist of?
Ans:
The spatial information in a GIS primarily consists of two components:
thematic and geometric data.
The thematic information describes the characteristics of a geographic
feature present in a place. It provides an answer to the question, ‘What is
present in a place?’ (Burrough and McDonnell, 1998, p. 19). Examples
include human-made and natural entities like roads, rivers, and soil
associations. Depending on the data model used to represent the
information and the desired scale at which the data must be captured, it is
represented as a continuous or discrete geographical feature.
Geometric information describes the location of a geospatial entity in
space. This geometric information can be represented using either of two
data models.
1. Vector data model, in which points, lines and polygons represent
discreet geospatial features in a continuous space, describing the
location, shape, and relationship with other geospatial features.
2. Raster data where continuous geospatial features are represented in a
grid-like data structure (pixels), and the average, or prevailing values
are recorded against an approximate location.
In a relational database, geometric and thematic information will be stored
in different tables and connected by unique keys present in both tables for
efficient data retrieval and analysis.
4. How can space related information be divided?
Ans:
Spatial relation is important for developing a useful query as it constraints
the geospatial information system to provide only information that meets
certain criteria about the target feature with respect to its reference
feature.
In a paper by Tinghua and Yaolin (2003), they discussed three spatial
relations as follows.
1. Topological relation
2. Distance relation
3. Orientation relation
Topological Relation:
Two spatial objects are in topological relationship if their relative position
remains constant under topological transformations like translation,
scaling, and rotation (Carniel, 2024, p. 1871).
There are four obvious topological relation when considering polygonal
intersection with emphasis on boundaries and interiors (Egenhofer and
Franzosa, 1991, p. 163).
1. Neighbourhood; in this case, only boundaries and interiors do not
2. Separation: here, neither boundaries nor interiors intersect.
3. Strict inclusion: here, the interiors intersect but the boundaries do not
4. Intersection: In this case, both boundaries and interiors intersect
(Egenhofer and Franzosa, 1991, p. 164).
We can also discuss Topological relations in terms of point set topology.
Here a topological space is defined as a set X and a family of subsets O
called the open sets of the space which satisfies the following axioms
1. The empty set is an element of the set O and X is an element of O
2. O contains with every finite collection O 1, .... On also the intersection O1
∩ .... ∩On
3. O contains all finite and infinite unions of sets O iϵ O (Gaal, 1964, p. 21)
Based on the point set topology model, 512 different relations can be
distinguished when considering the topological relation between any two
objects p and q. This is described by the 9 intersections of p’s interior,
boundary and exterior with the interior boundary and exterior of q.
However, only the following eight are meaningful for region objects:
disjoint, meet, overlap, contains, inside, cover, and covered_by (Papadias,
sellis, Theodoridis, and Egenhofer 1995, p. 92).
Distance relation
Metric relations describe how two spatial objects are related by using
numerical measures (e.g. area of a region, length of a line, distance)
(Carniel, 2024, p. 1871).
Several algorithms exist for obtaining distance of spatial objects from a
given reference object (Hjaltason and Samet, 1999, p. 269). Many of these
algorithms are dependent on the data structure employed in the spatial
database (Hjaltason and Samet, 1999, p. 269). For example, k nearest
neighbour, Broder algorithm (for k-d tree), Henrich algorithm (for LSD tree)
and incremental nearest neighbour (data structure agnostic) (Hjaltason
and Samet, 1999, p. 269).
It is also possible to consider distance relations from a point set topology
perspective. For example, a metric d on a set X induces a topology on X,
called the metric topology defined by d (Egenhofer and Franzosa, 1991, p.
164). “This topology is such that U ⊂ X is an open set if, for each x ∈ U ,
there is an ε > 0 such that the d-ball of radius ε around x is contained in U”
(Egenhofer and Franzosa, 1991, p. 164).
Direction relation
Orientation relation describes the relationship between two spatial objects
using directional measures such as angular ranges and cardinal direction
(Carniel, 2024, p. 1872).
Cardinal direction can be defined as a binary function that maps two
points (P1, P2) in the plane unto a symbolic direction d. This direction is
defined differently depending on the system being employed e.g. D 4 =
{N, E, S, W} or D8 = {N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW} (Frank, 1996, p. 273).
