Parametric database approach integration for handling temporal data in GIS

Abstract

In large spatial, temporal, and spatio-temporal databases, the concept of dimensions – time and space – is central and their efficient processing has always been a great concern. A Geographic Information System (GIS) is widely known for its efficient and sophisticated handling of the spatial databases; however, integration of the time domain introduces additional complexities. Considerable research is ongoing in this area. Though numerous approaches have already been proposed in the literature to address the time-related challenges in GIS community, such as the development of temporal GIS data models, this study contributes to these ongoing efforts through extensions to the Parametric Data Model. Parametric database approaches (Parametric Data Model) have been developed to handle dimensional data such as space, time, belief, etc. In this study, the time dimension is of specific interest and we propose the integration of parametric approaches to GIS to absorb the temporal burden. The temporal processing of the data is done using parametric approaches that address the limitation of GIS to support temporal queries and temporal analysis of phenomena. Using the AutoConViz tool, developed for spatio-temporal data modeling and visualization, results can be directly integrated into standard GIS software programs such as ArcGIS and further processed seamlessly along with and in a similar manner to other attributes.