Date:
Tue 18 Nov
Time:
15.00
Place:
room 214
Speaker:
Nectaria Tryfona,
Department of Computer Science,
Aalborg University,
Denmark
Title:
Designing Spatial Information Systems: Methodologies, Models and Tools
Reference:
Michela Bertolotto
Abstract.
Spatial Information Systems belong to the new, "non-standard"
application areas with special data modeling and processing needs and
extended demands on transaction management. In this work we extend
models and tools, provided by standard application development
methodologies used for "classical" applications, to serve the needs of
geographic applications. In particular: (1) we propose a General
Geographic Model for the definition of the basic concepts of
geographic objects, geometric types, and elementary spatial operations
and relationships; (2) we define the formal syntax and semantics of
GeoIFO, which serves as a prototypical semantic model suitable for
spatial database modeling at the conceptual level; (3) we propose the
formal, yet practical, GeoRelational Data Model for the logical level,
which provides a small set of representational constructs (relations
and layers for the logical schema; virtual layers, object classes and
spatial constraints for the user views) on top of well-established
models and, (4) finally we present rules for transforming a GeoIFO
schema to GeoRelational one which served as a basis for the Geographic
Computer-Aided Software Engineering tool. Our proposal has been used
to construct prototypical applications, small commercial systems, and
large research projects. It has received a welcome acceptance by both
users, who found it easy to understand, and developers, who adopted it
quickly. The contribution of this work is the long-term productivity
pay-offs of the methodology: although more time is spent for the
analysis, design and even individual module coding, the overall system
cost including integration, documentation and most importantly
maintenance, is much lower and the achieve quality much higher.
Dr. Nectaria Tryfona is assistant professor in the Department of
Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of Aalborg,
Denmark. She received her Dipl. Eng. and Ph.D. from the Department of
Computer Engineering and Informatics of the University of Patras
(Greece) in 1991, and 1994, respectively. Upon graduation from the
University of Patras she joined the National Center of Geographic
Information and Analysis at the University of Maine in USA as Post
Doctoral Research Associate and was involved in research projects
aiming at the assessment of geographic information consistency at
multiple levels of representation.
Her expertise and current research interests and activities
are focused in the area of Database Modeling, Geographic
Information Systems Design and Spatio-Temporal Information
Systems and Interoperability of Spatial
Systems. Her major scientific interests focus on database design,
non-standard and large-scale Information Systems, Computer Aided
Software Engineering Tools, Heterogeneous Databases,
Spatial Interoperability and Open Geographic Systems.