Building a Multi-Scale Database with Scale-Transition Relationships
Thomas Devogèle, Jenny Trévisan, Laurent Raynal · 2005
Building multiple representations is one of the key problems in GIS. To tackle this problem, we have chosen to connect geographic data from mono-scale representations to build a multi-scale database with scale-transition relationships. These scale-transition relationships connect two sets of elements (classes, types or objects) representing the same phenomenon of the real world and carry the sequence of multi-scale operations to navigate from one representation to another. From this concept, a process has been defined to build multi-scale databases, in three steps. The first step is dedicated to the declaration of correspondences and conflicts between input schemata by the means of scale-transition relationships. In the second step, conflicts are resolved and schemata are merged. Finally, the third step corresponds to data matching, with the help of geometric, topologic and semantic information. Scale-transition relationships between objects are created during this last step. To validate the process, a multi-scale database has been produced from two existing mono-scale sets of road network data. The first results of this kernel are satisfactory.