Starting with an updated description of Allen's calculus, the book proceeds with a description of the main qualitative calculi which have been developed over the last two decades.  It describes the connection of complexity issues to geometric properties. Models of the formalisms are described using the algebraic notion of weak representations of the associated algebras. The book also includes a presentation of fuzzy extensions of qualitative calculi, and a description of the study of complexity in terms of clones of operations.

Gérard Ligozat held the position of Researcher in Mathematics and Computer Science at the CNRS, and was a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Paris-Sud, France. He was offered a professorship in computer science at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland, where he taught Artificial Intelligence in 2008. He has been working on the subject of qualitative temporal and spatial reasoning for the past 25 years.