Spatio-Temporal Databases : Flexible Querying And Reasoning

Spatio-Temporal Databases explores recent trends in flexible querying and reasoning about time- and space-related information in databases. It shows how flexible querying enhances standard querying expressiveness in many different ways, with the aim of facilitating extraction of relevant data and information. Flexible spatial and temporal reasoning denotes qualitative reasoning about dynamic changes in the spatial domain, characterized by imprecision or uncertainty (or both). Many of the contributions focus on GIS, while some others are more general, or focus on related application fields, presenting theoretical viewpoints and techniques that are inspiring or can be adapted for GIS. The first part bundles the contributions on advances at the theoretical level, also discussing examples and opening further perspectives. The second part presents contributions on well-developed applications. The authors explain how to handle imprecision and uncertainty, demonstrating how advanced techniques can help to solve diverse problems related to GIS.

From the reviews:

"The book begins with a theory section comprising 11 chapters ... . Overall, Spatio-Temporal Databases is excellent as a cover-to-cover read ... . New graduate students in geoinformatics (or others approaching the advanced concepts for the first time) should read this book front to back ... . When they finish, they will be well-informed and ready to succeed ... . This is an important book for all research groups ... in any form; the authors and editors deserve thanks for producing such a good one." (Phil A. Graniero, Geomatica, Vol. 59 (2), 2005)