The Objects Interaction Graticule for Cardinal Direction Querying in Moving Objects Data Warehouses

Abstract

Cardinal directions have turned out to be very important qualitative spatial relations due to their numerous applications in spatial wayfinding, GIS, qualitative spatial reasoning and in domains such as cognitive sciences, AI and robotics. They are frequently used as selection criteria in spatial queries. Moving objects data warehouses can help to analyze complex multidimensional data of a spatio-temporal nature and to provide decision support. However, currently there is no available method to query for cardinal directions between spatio-temporal objects in data warehouses. In this paper, we introduce the concept of a moving objects data warehouse (MODW) for storing and querying multidimensional spatio-temporal data. Further, we also present a novel two-phase approach to model and query for cardinal directions between moving objects by using the MODW framework. First, we apply a tiling strategy that determines the zone belonging to the nine cardinal directions of each spatial object at a particular time and then intersects them. This leads to a collection of grids over time called the Objects Interaction Graticule (OIG). For each grid cell, the information about the spatial objects that intersect it is stored in an Objects Interaction Matrix. In the second phase, an interpretation method is applied to these matrices to determine the cardinal direction between the moving objects. These results are integrated into MDX queries using directional predicates.