Phd Activity of Paola Podestà

PhD Courses and Credits

PhD Schools:

1. A.A.2004/2005
   • 7-18/03/2005.
     BISS 2005: Bertinoro International Spring School for Graduate Studies in Computer Science, Bertinoro(Forlì-Cesena, Italy).
   • Approximation, Chance and Networks(ACN)(15h)
     Lecturer: Prof. Alessandro Panconesi
     Department of Computer Sciences, University of Rome "La Sapienza", Italy.
     Exam: 30/30
   • Machine Learning (ML)(15h)
     Lecturer: Alessandro Sperduti
     Dipartimento di Matematica Pura ed Applicata, University of Padova, Italy.
     Exam: 18/20
   • Decision diagrams and their applications (DDTA) (15h)
     Lecturer: Gianfranco Ciardo,
     Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of California at Riverside, USA.
     Exam: 98%(PASS)
   • Strong static typing and advanced functional programming (SST) (15h)
     Lecturer: Dr. Francesco Zappa Nardelli,
     INRIA Rocquencourt, France.
     Exam: passed

PhD Courses:

1. A.A. 2004/2005
   • Applicazioni di Rete 2 (Network Application 2)
     Corso di Laurea Specialistica in Informatica
     DISI - Univ. di Genova
     Lecturer: Prof. ssa Marina Ribaudo
     Exam: 20/20.

Teaching Assistant Activity

• A.A. 2005/2006
  • 03-05/2006.
    Laboratory assistance for the course: "Modelli dei Dati di Nuova Generazione".
    Lecturer: Prof. ssa Barbara Catania.
    Assistance for final project and examinations.
  
  
  • Assistance for the supervision activity of the Bachelor's thesis of Bernardo Pugnaloni, Michele Isola.
    Advisors: Prof. ssa Barbara Catania, Dott.ssa Paola, Podestà.
  
  
  • Assistance for the supervisionn activity of the Master's thesis of Alberto Grillo, Mela Enrica, Silvano Parodi.
    Advisors: Prof. ssa Barbara Catania, Dott.ssa Paola, Podestà.
  
  
• A.A. 2004/2005
  • 03-05/2005.
    Laboratory assistance for the course: "Modelli dei Dati di Nuova Generazione".
    Lecturer: Prof. ssa Barbara Catania.
    Assistance for final project and examinations.
  
  
  • Assistance for the supervision activity of the Bachelor's thesis of Alessio Zumbo.
    Advisors: Prof. ssa Barbara Catania, Dott.ssa Paola, Podestà.

Research Activity

• Supervisor: Prof. ssa Barbara Catania.
• Thesis Advisor:
  • Prof.ssa Barbara Catania;
  • Prof. Alberto Belussi
• Research interests: DataBases - GeoSpatial Databases - Geographic Information System - Knowledge Discovery in Databases.

Pubblications

2006.

• Paola Podestà, Barbara Catania and Alberto Belussi.
  Using Qualitative Information in Query Processing over Multiresolution Maps.
  In E. Ferrari, A. Belussi, B. Catania, E. Clementini, eds., Modelling and Management of Geographical Data over Distributed Architectures. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. In pubblication.

• Alberto Belussi, Barbara Catania, and Paola Podestà.
  Using Qualitative Information in Query Processing over Multiresolution Maps.
  Technical Report DISI-TR-06-18, Dipartimento di Informatica e Scienze dell'Informazione, Università di Genova, Italy, (2006).

• Alberto Belussi, Omar Boucelma, Barbara Catania, Yassine Lassoued, and Paola Podestà.
  Towards similarity-based spatial query language.
  In Proc. 11th International Workshop on Foundations of Models and Languages for Data and Objects, Query Languages and Query Processing (QLQP-2006), 2006.
  [BibTeX] [pdf]

2005.

• Alberto Belussi, Barbara Catania and Paola Podestà.
  Towards Topological Consistency and Similarity of Multiresolution Geographical Maps.
  In Proc. 13th ACM Int. Symp. on Advances in GIS, pages 220-229, 2005.
  [BibTeX] [pdf]

• Barbara Catania and Paola Podestà.
  Raffinamento Progressivo di Interrogazioni per Basi di Dati Spaziali Multirisoluzione.
  Tech. Rep. (SPADA@WEB), UNIGE.B.23, DISI - Università degli Studi di Genova, Ottobre 2005.

Conferences, Seminars, Short Visits

2005.

• 13th ACM International Workshop on Geographic Information Systems, November 4-5, 2005, Bremen, Germany, ACM-GIS 2005.

Annual Reports

2006.

In this year I have finalized the task concerning the comparison of multiresolution spatial data sets, and I decide to discard the temporal information. In particular I define a model for such sets, a model for both topological and cardinal relations. From the point of view of the multiresolution sets comparison I have defined a topological and cardinal distance function between multiresolution sets and also a similarity function between such sets.

My work on the task concerning the query process has been mainly focused on the query language, in fact I haved defined weak spatial (topological and cardinal) predicates based on the concepts of similarity and consistency between spatial relations. Moreover, I have used such predicates to define the semantics of a weak algebra. I decided to discard the local query processing, in order to address the new interesting issue of the quality of spatial data, thus I consider only the global query processing. Now I am studying the impact of the weak algebra in the global query processing.

The task on the data analysis has not been investigated yet, and we plan to address it only after the finalization of the other tasks.

2005.

In this year, I have improved my knowledge concerning spatial data and their related, such as the spatial relationships (topological, metrical, directional), the definition of multiresolution spatial datasets and the concepts of consistency and similarity between such datasets. I started to investigate data integration architecture, in particular the mediator system; in order to exploit spatial relation and multiresolution to improve query processing of such system.

During 2004-2005, I partecipated to the SPADA@WEB project. In this context, I contributed to define a model for multiresolution spatial vector maps, a set of topological relations and the concepts of topological consistency and similarity. I contributed, also, to define a computational method to evaluate both consistency and similarity. In order to test the effectiveness of the defined approaches, we performed some preliminarly experiments using both real and synthetic geographic datasets.

Concerning query processing my contribution is twofold. The first is a preliminary approach for progressive refinement of query results for multiresolution geographic databases in distribuited architectures. The second is a preliminary approach to query rewriting that introduces some mechanisms of query relaxation, in order to approximate the results of topological queries. PhD thesis proposal .pdf