This property specifies that the temporal extent of the domain instance A of E2 Temporal Entity starts before or simultaneously with the start of the temporal extent of the range instance B of E2 Temporal Entity.
In other words, if A = [Astart, Aend] and B = [Bstart, Bend], we mean Astart ≤ Bstart is true.
This property is part of the set of temporal primitives P173 – P176, P182 – P185.
This property corresponds to a disjunction (logical OR) of the following Allen temporal relations [Allen, 1983]: {before, meets, overlaps, starts, started-by, contains, finished-by, equals}
In a model with fuzzy borders, this property will not be transitive.
Figure 5: Temporal entity A starts before or with the start of temporal entity B. Here A is longer than B
Figure 6: Temporal entity A starts before or with the start of temporal entity B. Here A is shorter than B