Abstract
Without geospatial data management, today’s challenges in big data applications such as earth observation, geographic information system/building information modeling (GIS/BIM) integration, and 3D/4D city planning cannot be solved. Furthermore, geospatial data management plays a connecting role between data acquisition, data modelling, data visualization, and data analysis. It enables the continuous availability of geospatial data and the replicability of geospatial data analysis. In the first part of this article, five milestones of geospatial data management research are presented that were achieved during the last decade. The first one reflects advancements in BIM/GIS integration at data, process, and application levels. The second milestone presents theoretical progress by introducing topology as a key concept of geospatial data management. In the third milestone, 3D/4D geospatial data management is described as a key concept for city modelling, including subsurface models. Progress in modelling and visualization of massive geospatial features on web platforms is the fourth milestone which includes discrete global grid systems as an alternative geospatial reference framework. The intensive use of geosensor data sources is the fifth milestone which opens the way to parallel data storage platforms supporting data analysis on geosensors. In the second part of this article, five future directions of geospatial data management research are presented that have the potential to become key research fields of geospatial data management in the next decade. Geo-data science will have the task to extract knowledge from unstructured and structured geospatial data and to bridge the gap between modern information technology concepts and the geo-related sciences. Topology is presented as a powerful and general concept to analyze GIS and BIM data structures and spatial relations that will be of great importance in emerging applications such as smart cities and digital twins. Data-streaming libraries and “in-situ” geo-computing on objects executed directly on the sensors will revolutionize geo-information science and bridge geo-computing with geospatial data management. Advanced geospatial data visualization on web platforms will enable the representation of dynamically changing geospatial features or moving objects’ trajectories. Finally, geospatial data management will support big geospatial data analysis, and graph databases are expected to experience a revival on top of parallel and distributed data stores supporting big geospatial data analysis.
Highlights
The massive use of geo-referenced data sets in many fields of science and economy including earth observation [1], environmental sciences [2], city planning [3], BIM [3,4], real-time processing [5,6], and analytics for geospatial data [5] makes geospatial data management increasingly a central task in the workflow of geospatial data processing [1,5,7]
A new term for integrated BIM and geospatial information systems (GIS) data is coined as GeoBIM, and a benchmark was initiated by ISPRS Commission IV communities to foster the emergence of BIM and GIS integration in research and development engaging academia, stakeholders, government, and industries
Looking at the other spectrum of the milestones, the theory of geospatial data modelling and management has been improved by considering topology as a sound mathematical framework which is not limited to topological relationships as formulated in the 4- or 9-intersection model
Summary
The massive use of geo-referenced data sets in many fields of science and economy including earth observation [1], environmental sciences [2], city planning [3], BIM [3,4], real-time processing [5,6], and analytics for geospatial data [5] makes geospatial data management increasingly a central task in the workflow of geospatial data processing [1,5,7]. The close connection of geospatial data management with other research fields within geo-information science such as data modelling, data visualization, and data analysis is the focus of our interest. Geospatial data management is heavily influenced by the fusion of application fields such as BIM and GIS. A new term for integrated BIM and GIS data is coined as GeoBIM, and a benchmark Nl/projects/geobim-benchmark/) was initiated by ISPRS Commission IV communities to foster the emergence of BIM and GIS integration in research and development engaging academia, stakeholders, government, and industries.
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