Spatial Databases : Technologies, Techniques And Trends

Spatial Databases: Technologies, Techniques and Trends introduces the reader to the world of spatial databases and related subtopics. The broad range of topics covered within the chapters includes spatial data modeling, indexing of spatial and spatiotemporal objects, data mining and knowledge discovery in spatial and spatiotemporal management issues and query processing for moving objects.
The reader will be able to get in touch with several important research issues the research community is dealing with today. Covering fundamental aspects up to advanced material, this book appeals to a broad computer science audience. Although perfect for specialists, each chapter is self contained, making it easy for non-specialists to grasp the main issues involved.

Yannis Manolopoulos was born in Thessaloniki, Greece in 1957. He received his 5-year Diploma degree in Electrical Engineering degree and his PhD degree from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 1981 and 1986 respectively. He has been with the Department of Computer Science of the University of Toronto, the Department of Computer Science of the University of Maryland at College Park and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of the Aristotle University. Currently he is a Professor at the Department of Informatics of Aristotle University. He has published over 100 papers in refereed scientific journals and conference proceedings. He is author of two textbooks on data/file structures, which are recommended in the vast majority of the computer science/engineering departments in Greece. He has served as PC member in a number of conferences such as SIGMOD, EDBT, SSD, ADBIS and ACM-GIS, whereas currently he is member of the Editorial Board of The Computer Journal. His research interests include spatiotemporal databases, databases for the web, data mining, data/file structures and algorithms and performance evaluation of secondary and tertiary storage systems.

Apostolos N. Papadopoulos was born in Eleftheroupolis, Greece in 1971. He received his 5-year Diploma degree in Computer Engineering and Informatics from the University of Patras and his PhD degree from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in 1994 and 2000 respectively. He has published several research papers in journals and proceedings of international conferences. From March 1998 to August 1998 he was a visitor researcher at INRIA research center in Paris in order to perform research in benchmarking issues for spatial databases. Currently, he is a Lecturer in the Department of Informatics of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He is a member of the Greek Computer Society and the Technical Chamber of Greece. His research interests include spatial and spatiotemporal databases, data stream processing, parallel and distributed databases, data mining, physical database design.

Michael Gr. Vassilakopoulos was born in Thessaloniki, Greece in 1967. He received a B. Eng. (1990) in Computer Eng. and Informatics from the Univ. of Patras and a Ph.D. (1995) in Electrical and Computer Eng. from the Aristotle Univ. of Thessaloniki. He followed post-doctoral studies at the Lab of Data Engineering of the Dept. of Informatics of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He has been awarded scholarships for undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral studies from the Scholarship Foundation of the Greek State. His B. Eng. thesis deals with Algorithms of Computational Geometry, his doctoral thesis deals with Spatial Databases and his post-doctoral research deals with Query Processing in Spatial Databases. Apart from the above, his research interests include Spatio-temporal Databases, GIS, WWW, Information Systems Integration, Multimedia and Programming Methodologies. He has published over 35 papers / chapters in refereed scientific journals, conference proceedings and books. He served as a member of the program committee and the organizing committee of international conferences and as a reviewer of several scientific journals and international conferences. He has participated in numerous RTD projects related to Databases, WWW and Information Systems. He has been with the Dept. of Applied Informatics of the Univ. of Macedonia, the Dept. of Informatics of the Aristotle Univ. of Thessaloniki and the Dept. of Informatics of the Technological Educational Institute of Thessaloniki. For three years he also served the Greek Public Administration as an Informatics Engineer where he participated in the evaluation and supervision of several Information Technology projects. Currently, he is an Associate Professor in the area of Databases at the Dept. of Informatics of the Technological Educational Institute of Thessaloniki.