A description logic with concrete domains and a role-forming predicate operator

This article presents the description logic ALCRP(D) with concrete domains and a role-forming predicate operator as its prominent aspects. We demonstrate the feasibility of ALCRP(D) for reasoning about spatial objects and their qualitative spatial relationships and provide an appropriate concrete domain for spatial objects. The general significance of ALCRP(D) is demonstrated by adding temporal reasoning to spatial and terminological reasoning using a combined concrete domain. The theory is motivated as a basis for knowledge representation and query processing in the domain of geographic information systems. In contrast to existing work in this domain, which mainly focuses either on conceptual reasoning or on reasoning about qualitative spatial relations, we integrate reasoning about spatial information with terminological reasoning.