Preliminary Exploration of Foundational Models in Databases of Temporal-spatial GIS
WU Yuan-hu · Journal of Tongji University · 2004
Research on expression methods of temporal-spatial data theory,an application of the foundational models is the key issues in the development of temporal geographical information system (TGIS). As an advanced tool,TGIS can be used to record fully historical geographical reality, explain and analyze the dynamic processes of geographical changes,and research explicitly on the mechanism and other corresponding processes resulting from the evolution of the geographical reality and phenomena. The fundamentals of the research and the establishment of TGIS were include how to define an integrated definition and expression of temporal and spatial data, determine the category and classification of the foundational models, select the suitable construction of the models for the successful modeling and so on. At the beginning of TGIS ideas put forward and in practice, foundational models in TGIS were classified normally according to the querying category - what, where and when (3W issues corresponding to the feature space,and time) or the modeling tools utilized - entity relations diagrams(ERD), semantic models (SM) and object-oriented models (OOM). In the view of studying the foundational models in TGIS, by discussion and reduction of difference and relations between the foundational models based on different classification methods and different scale used, this paper puts forward a suggestion that the foundational models in TGIS can be classified at three ranks i.e. fundamental,composite and advanced. All the expressions of the models have been expressed and discussed in the paper. The purpose of the paper is to put forward some new ideas for the future research on TGIS.