An Event-based Spatiotemporal Approach

Abstract

With the development of temporal GIS (TGIS), users are not satisfied with the traditional static 2-dimensioinal maps any more, for the real-world entities are evolving in both space and time. Many papers have been brought to propose data models and query languages for TGIS applications. However they are not really adapted for the representation of dynamic geographical phenomena. The current concept of version is not suitable for storing continuous entity evolving information. To fulfil this work, this paper discusses the extended concept of version, called dynamic version, for modelling spatiotemporal entity evolution. The new definition of events and processes this paper presented allows for comprehensive decomposition and representation of complex spatiotemporal phenomena. Two application examples of our approach are brought out to discuss how we express temporal relationships among geographical entities and links describing their joint evolution.