A Hybrid Temporal GIS Representation for Coastal Dynamics

The experimental research developed in this paper introduces a hybrid temporal GIS representation for studying the dynamics of a coastal seabed. The approach is based on a dual temporal GIS data model that combines the object and field views of space. The first concept is the one of an object-field defined as a field in which each location is associated to one or more geographic objects type. The second key concept is the field-object defined as an object with internal heterogeneity conceptualized as a field. The main idea behind this approach is to provide a flexible representation that supports field and object evolutions. A series of spatio-temporal queries have been categorized and specified on top of the hybrid representation and shows the interest of the combination of the field and object abstractions at the data manipulation level. The approach has been applied to a coastal data environment, and implemented within the PostgreSQL RDBMS and its spatial extension PostGIS.