A conceptual framework for spatiotemporal data modeling

Abstract

Conceptual data modeling of spatiotemporal applications is used to describe user's cognition of real world phenomena and must support adequate concepts and notations with accurate semantics to allow the developer to capture and present spatiotemporal information. In this paper we propose a conceptual framework for spatiotemporal geographic data modeling, which is based on the Object-Oriented concept and additionally provides an expression for capturing space, time and time-varying information. The framework is built around the concept of geographic theme. We focus on using operations to define a new theme based on already defined themes, the internal representation being completely hidden from the user. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2003.