Spatial and Topological Data Models

Abstract

Spatial and topological data models are increasingly important in business applications such as urban development planning, transportation and traffic control, decision support in agriculture, pollution and environment analysis, fire and flood prevention, etc. that require handling spatial and topological data more efficiently and more effectively than older models, for example the relational data model. In this survey we compare several alternative spatial and topological data models: the Spaghetti Data Model, the Vague Region Data Model, the Topological Data Model, Worboys’ Spatiotemporal Data Model and the Constraint Data Model. We first describe how spatial and/or topological data are represented and give examples for each data model. We also illustrate by examples the use of an appropriate query language for each data model.