Modeling behavior of geographic objects: An experience with the object modeling technique

Abstract

Behavior of geographic objects holds a critical role in spatial databases. This, along with objects' position and space-varying attributes form a minimal set of concepts sufficient to capture spatial peculiarities in terms of the object-oriented rationale. We present the semantics and the graphical notation of a prototypical object-oriented model for the conceptual design of spatial databases: by extending the Object Model of the Object Modeling Technique to the Geographic Object Model, we show how the above three concepts fit naturally into any objectoriented tool. We augment this model with the constructs of spatial aggregation and spatial grouping to express the critical aspects of space-varying attributes, object boundary fuzziness and uncertainty, spatial relationships, and attribute generalization. Our proposal integrates the field- and object-based geographic views in one model. The principal idea behind this effort is the incorporation of a set of concepts into any semantic or object-oriented model in order to make them communicate at the conceptual level (semantic interoperability).