Spatiotemporal Object Database Approach to Dynamic Segmentation

Dynamic segmentation is viewed as one of the most important functions of geographic information systems for transportation applications. Although the road network and associated events (e.g., pavement material, traffic volume, incidents) can be referenced to both space and time, the spatial and temporal dimensions have not been well integrated. Modeling space-varying, time-varying, and space-time-varying events in dynamic segmentation by using an object database approach that is in line with the Object Database Management Group standard is explored. A mechanism called parametric polymorphism is used to lift conventional data types to spatial, temporal, and spatiotemporal types for maintaining knowledge about events that could change spatially, temporally, and spatiotemporally along linear features. An associated object query language, DS-OQL, was designed to support the formulation of spatial, temporal, and spatiotemporal queries on the road and event information.