[OSGeo-Discuss] GIS Data Models

[Lucena, Ivan]

Landon,

There it goes:

Landon Blake wrote:
> Does anyone know if there has been work on GIS Data Models besides any 
> organization other than ESRI? 
> (http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/geodatabase/about/data-models.html)

There it goes:

SPRING: Integrating Remote Sensing and GIS with Object-Oriented Data 
Modelling. G.Câmara, R.Souza, U.Freitas, J.Garrido, F. Ii. *Computers 
and Graphics*, vol.15(6):13-22, 1996.

Note: Ivan Lucena on page 15 is me.

> However, this material is definitely written for a user of ESRI 
> software. It is possible to extract basic principles from the material 
> ESRI produces on data models, although this can be difficult given the 
> amount of software specific content.

Sure.

> Has there been any effort by the open source community to develop GIS 
> Data Models? (By a GIS Data Model I mean a template or set of guidelines 
> for one or more thematic layers and the features they contain as these 
> layers apply to a particular application. For example: Agriculture)

Just as an example, using that software above mentioned I once developed 
a Data Model for research in Precision Agriculture. Basically what you 
do is given a source of datasets in the real word, like Geological Map 
or Altimetry you take the class that best represent it, like "Thematic" 
or "Numeric" and you give it a name and symbology appropriated for your 
application domain. You do that previous to the data acquisition and you 
can use the schema you used in several different projects.

Note: The physical data storage is trick tough, by the concept of 
multi-representation you can have in a database one single Thematic 
layer represented by vector and/or raster. For Numeric layers is even 
tricker, it could have Vector (contour map, triangular grid, 3D points) 
or Raster (regular grid) for the same "Layer". How does it sounds? I 
never rear of any other software that does that. Have you?

> I am starting work on a data model for Survey Control as part of my 
> efforts at the SurveyOS Project and at my day job. As part of this work 
> I would like to develop some tutorials and templates for data model 
> design that could be used by others in the FOSS GIS arena. These data 
> model patterns will focus on “vendor-neutral” GIS design. I hope to work 
> on other data models as the years pass, and most of these will be survey 
> related.

You can play if that software to get some ideas but it is not exactly 
the "neutral" solution you want:

http://www.dpi.inpe.br/spring/english/index.html

> I am curious if there has been work like this done before. For example, 
> I’ll need to define some abstract data types for Feature attributes that 
> could be “mapped” to various software platforms and/or programming 
> languages.

Again, Not exactly. It answers you first question but not the second one.

> 
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> 
> Any thoughts?

It is certainly a cool topic. :)

Ivan

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> SLB
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