Geographic Information Systems: a Unified Conceptual Model for Temporal Aspects

Abstract

Time presents an important component of spatial analysis. However, conventionalGeographic information systems (GIS) approaches adopt a static view to model geographicphenomena and are incapable of representing the changes and the dynamics of GIS. Buildingon pre-existing formalisms, a unified spatial-temporal GIS data model is developed tofaithfully record all of the time-related information produced by GIS. For the temporalrepresentation, the unified temporal model which we have represented in (Radjai and Rassoul,2013) accommodates different temporal primitives and types. Time can be absolute andrelative, certain or uncertain. Different granularities and calendars are supported. In thispaper, we demonstrate that we can use this model to represent all time related data and torefer to any past state of GIS. For the spatial representation, we use the GeoProfile model(LISBOA-FILHO et al, 2010). This framework allows us to represent geographic phenomenain the object as well as in the field view.