Reactive Data Structures for Geographic Information Systems (Spatial Information Systems)

This work is the first to describe techniques for the storage and manipulation of geographic data at multiple scales and in an integrated manner, thus avoiding the redundancies of other techniques. The book opens with a general introduction to Geographic Information Systems. It then goes on to give an overview of the known spatial access methods and presents several new structures: multi-object BSP-tree, KD2B-tree, sphere-tree, BLG-tree, reactive BSP-tree, and reactive-tree. The reactive BSP-tree and reactive-tree are geometric structures which take multiple levels of detail into account. They are reactive data structures which form the basis of a seamless, scaleless, geographic database. The work goes on to describe two advanced GIS architecture types: the geographic relational extension and the object-oriented (OO) approach. Actual implementations are presented as well as theoretical discussion of the systems. GEO++ is based on the open research DBMS Postgres and realizes the geographic relational extension. In the OO programming language, Procol, persistent objects are introduced in order to combine the powerful OO modelling with the database functionality required for GISs. An up-to-date reference for a rapidly developing field, the book will benefit all researchers and practitioners using or developing geographic information systems.