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Spatiotemporal Database

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Definition

A spatiotemporal database is a new type of database system that manages spatiotemporal objects and supports corresponding query functionalities. A spatiotemporal object is a kind of object that dynamically updates spatial locations and/or extents along with time. A typical example of a spatiotemporal object is a moving object (e.g., a car, a flight or a pedestrian) whose location continuously changes.

Spatiotemporal databases have many important applications such as Geographic Information Systems, Location-aware Systems, Traffic Monitoring Systems, and Environmental Information Systems. Due to their importance, spatiotemporal database systems are very actively researched in the database domain. Interested readers are referred to Abraham and Roddick (1999) for a detailed survey of spatiotemporal Databases.

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Contrary to traditional database systems, a spatiotemporal database must be able to manage the dynamic properties of spatiotemporal objects efficiently. As...

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References

  • Abraham T, Roddick JF (1999) Survey of spatio-temporal databases. Geoinformatica 3(1):61–99

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  • Mokbel MF, Ghanem TM, Aref WA (2003) Spatio-temporal access methods. IEEE Data Eng Bull 26(2)

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  • Sellis TK (1999) Research issues in spatio-temporal database systems. In: SSD’99: proceedings of the 6th international symposium on advances in spatial databases. Springer, London, pp 5–11

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Xiong, X., Mokbel, M.F., Aref, W.G. (2017). Spatiotemporal Database. In: Shekhar, S., Xiong, H., Zhou, X. (eds) Encyclopedia of GIS. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17885-1_1316

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