  We study the simultaneous embeddability of a pair of partitions of the same
underlying set into disjoint blocks. Each element of the set is mapped to a
point in the plane and each block of either of the two partitions is mapped to
a region that contains exactly those points that belong to the elements in the
block and that is bounded by a simple closed curve. We establish three main
classes of simultaneous embeddability (weak, strong, and full embeddability)
that differ by increasingly strict well-formedness conditions on how different
block regions are allowed to intersect. We show that these simultaneous
embeddability classes are closely related to different planarity concepts of
hypergraphs. For each embeddability class we give a full characterization. We
show that (i) every pair of partitions has a weak simultaneous embedding, (ii)
it is NP-complete to decide the existence of a strong simultaneous embedding,
and (iii) the existence of a full simultaneous embedding can be tested in
linear time.
