Identity based change represented in the three domain model : an efficient system for modelling real world phenomena

Abstract

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have gone a great way since it has started as a science. GIS is making headlines in a number of disciplines and, through its advancement, has improved our ability to model our real world. In the past years the need to support the storage and retrieval of dynamic changes, which occur to our data, has increased which consequently led to the interest in spatio-temporal behavior in GIS. These years have also seen the birth of several spatio-temporal data Models, whose aim is to support this spatio-temporal behavior. The main aim behind Spatio-Temporal support is to be able to answer a set of spatio-temporal queries. The ultimate goal behind these models is to support exploration, explanation, prediction, and planning. In this thesis we will review these models, then concentrate on the three-domain model for we believe its flexible structure makes it an excellent model to support the storage and retrieval of spatio-temporal data. In addition this thesis investigates a special type of change named Identity Based Change and show how to efficiently implement identity based change operations within the three-domain model framework. Modeling spatio-temporal change will help to further reflect real world behavior, in other words improve our ability to model the real world.