Discovering spatiotemporal topological relationships

Abstract

Discovering spatiotemporal topological relationships deals with the discovery of geometric relationships like disjoint, cover, intersection and overlap between every pair of spatiotemporal objects and change of such relationships with time from spatiotemporal databases. Spatiotemporal databases deal with changes to spatial objects with time. The applications in this domain process spatial, temporal and attribute data elements to find the evolution of spatial objects and changes in their topological relationships with time. These advanced database applications require storing, management and processing of complex spatiotemporal data. In this paper we discuss the design of spatiotemporal database and methodology for discovering various kinds of spatiotemporal topological relationships. Prototype implementation of the system is carried out on top of open source object relational spatial database management system called postgresql and postgis. The algorithms are experimented on historical cadastral datasets that are created using OpenJump. The results that are visualized using OpenJump software are presented. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.