Design and Implementation of an Object-Oriented Space-Time GIS Data Model

Geographic data are closely related to both spatial and temporal domains. Geographic information systems (GIS) can capture, manage, analyze, and display spatial data. However, they are not suitable for handling temporal data. Rapid developments of data collection and location-aware technologies stimulate the interests of obtaining useful information from the historical data. Researchers have been working to build various spatio-temporal data models to support spatio-temporal query. Nevertheless, the existing models exhibit weaknesses in various aspects. For instance, the snapshot model is plagued with data redundancy and the event-based spatio-temporal data model (ESTDM) is limited to raster dataset. This study reviews existing spatio-temporal data models in order to design an object-oriented space-time GIS data model that makes additional contributions to processing spatio-temporal data. A binary large object (BLOB) data type, labeled Space-Time BLOB, is added to ArcGIS geodatabase data model to store instantiated space-time objects. A Space-Time BLOB is associated with an array that contains the spatial and temporal information for an object at different time points and time intervals. This study also implements a space-time GIS prototype system, along with a set of spatio-temporal query functions, based on the proposed space-time GIS data model

The representation and management of evolving features in geospatial databases

Geographic features change over time, this change being the result of some kind of event or occurrence. It has been a research challenge to represent this data in a manner that reflects human perception. Most database systems used in geographic information systems (GIS) are relational, and change is either captured by exhaustively storing all versions of data, or updates replace previous versions. This stems from the inherent diffculty of modelling geographic objects in relational tables. This diffculty is compounded when the necessary time dimension is introduced to model how those objects evolve. There is little doubt that the object-oriented (OO) paradigm holds signi cant advantages over the relational model when it comes to modelling real-world entities and spatial data, and it is argued that this contention is particularly true when it comes to spatio-temporal data. This thesis describes an object-oriented approach to the design of a conceptual model for representing spatio-temporal geographic data, called the Feature Evolution Model (FEM), based on states and events. The model was used to implement a spatio-temporal database management system in Oracle Spatial, and an interface prototype is described that was used to evaluate the system by enabling querying and visualisation

Data modelling for emergency response

Emergency response is one of the most demanding phases in disaster management. The fire brigade, paramedics, police and municipality are the organisations involved in the first response to the incident. They coordinate their work based on welldefined policies and procedures, but they also need the most complete and up-todate information about the incident, which would allow a reliable decision-making.\ud There is a variety of systems answering the needs of different emergency responders, but they have many drawbacks: the systems are developed for a specific sector; it is difficult to exchange information between systems; the systems offer too much or little information, etc. Several systems have been developed to share information during emergencies but usually they maintain the nformation that is coming from field operations in an unstructured way.\ud This report presents a data model for organisation of dynamic data (operational and situational data) for emergency response. The model is developed within the RGI-239 project ‘Geographical Data Infrastructure for Disaster Management’ (GDI4DM)

Temporal GIS Design of an Extended Time-geographic Framework for Physical and Virtual Activities

Recent rapid developments of information and communication technologies (ICT) enable a virtual space, which allows people to conduct activities remotely through tele-presence rather than through conventional physical presence in physical space. ICT offer people additional freedom in space and time to carry out their activities; this freedom leads to changes in the spatio-temporal distributions of activities. Given that activities are the reasons for travel, these changes will impact transportation systems. Therefore, a better understanding of the spatial and temporal characteristics of human activities in today’s society will help researchers study the impact of ICT on transportation. Using an integrated space-time system, Hägerstrand’s time geography provides an effective framework for studying the relationships of various constraints and human activities in physical space, but it does not support activities in virtual space. The present study provides a conceptual model to describe the relationships of physical space and virtual space, extending Hägerstrand’s time geography to handle both physical and virtual activities. This extended framework is used to support investigations of spatial and temporal characteristics of human activities and their interactions in physical and virtual spaces. Using a 3D environment (i.e., 2D space + 1D time), a temporal GIS design is developed to accommodate the extended time-geographic framework. This GIS design supports representations of time-geographic objects (e.g., space-time paths, networkbased space-time prisms, and space-time life paths) and a selected set of analysis functions applied to these objects (e.g., temporal dynamic segmentation and spatiotemporal intersection). A prototype system, with customized functions developed in Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) programs with ArcObjects, is implemented in ArcGIS according to the design. Using a hypothetical activity dataset, the system demonstrates the feasibility of the extended framework and the temporal GIS design to explore physical and virtual activities. This system offers useful tools with which to tackle various real problems related to physical and virtual activities

Historical collaborative geocoding

The latest developments in digital have provided large data sets that can increasingly easily be accessed and used. These data sets often contain indirect localisation information, such as historical addresses. Historical geocoding is the process of transforming the indirect localisation information to direct localisation that can be placed on a map, which enables spatial analysis and cross-referencing. Many efficient geocoders exist for current addresses, but they do not deal with the temporal aspect and are based on a strict hierarchy (..., city, street, house number) that is hard or impossible to use with historical data. Indeed historical data are full of uncertainties (temporal aspect, semantic aspect, spatial precision, confidence in historical source, ...) that can not be resolved, as there is no way to go back in time to check. We propose an open source, open data, extensible solution for geocoding that is based on the building of gazetteers composed of geohistorical objects extracted from historical topographical maps. Once the gazetteers are available, geocoding an historical address is a matter of finding the geohistorical object in the gazetteers that is the best match to the historical address. The matching criteriae are customisable and include several dimensions (fuzzy semantic, fuzzy temporal, scale, spatial precision ...). As the goal is to facilitate historical work, we also propose web-based user interfaces that help geocode (one address or batch mode) and display over current or historical topographical maps, so that they can be checked and collaboratively edited. The system is tested on Paris city for the 19-20th centuries, shows high returns rate and is fast enough to be used interactively.Comment: WORKING PAPE

A Conceptual View on Trajectories

Analysis of trajectory data is the key to a growing number of applications aiming at global understanding and management of complex phenomena that involve moving objects (e.g. worldwide courier distribution, city traffic management, bird migration monitoring). Current DBMS support for such data is limited to the ability to store and query raw movement (i.e. the spatio-temporal position of an object). This paper explores how conceptual modeling could provide applications with direct support of trajectories (i.e. movement data that is structured into countable semantic units) as a first class concept. A specific concern is to allow enriching trajectories with semantic annotations allowing users to attach semantic data to specific parts of the trajectory. Building on a preliminary requirement analysis and an application example, the paper proposes two modeling approaches, one based on a design pattern, the other based on dedicated data types, and illustrates their differences in terms of implementation in an extended-relational context