Spatiotemporal Access Methods

Spatiotemporal Database Management Systems (STDBMSs) manage data whose geometry changes over time. There are many applications that create such data, including global change (as in climate or land cover changes), transportation (traffic surveillance data, intelligent transportation systems), social (demographic, health, etc.), and multimedia (animated movies) applications. For simplicity we consider two spatial attributes, the object position and extent, either (or both) of which can change with time. Based on the rate that spatial attributes change, we identify two cases: the discrete and the continuous spatiotemporal environments. We first introduce the basic characteristics and interesting queries for each environment and then present efficient spatiotemporal indexing techniques.