Enhancing Decision Support Systems with Spatial Capabilities

Abstract

This chapter introduces spatial dimensions and measures as a means of enhancing decision support systems with spatial capabilities. By some way or other, spatial related data has been used for a long time; however, spatial dimensions have not been fully exploited. It is presented a data model that tightly integrates data warehouse and geographical information systems — so characterizing a spatial data warehouse (SDW) — ; more precisely, the focus is on a formalization of SDW concepts, on a spatial-aware data cube using object-relational technology, and on issues underlying a SDW — specially regarding spatial data aggregation operations. Finally, the MapWarehouse prototype is presented aiming to validate the ideas proposed. The authors believe that SDW allows for the efficient processing of queries that use, jointly, spatial and numerical temporal data (e.g., temporal series from summarized spatial and numerical measures).