User-centric spatial data warehousing: a survey of requirements and approaches

Abstract

The increased availability of spatial data in recent years has lead to new challenges in the analysis of large multidimensional datasets. One solution is to integrate GIS with OLAP and relational databases. Another strategy has been to leverage existing spatial capabilities of databases to perform spatial OLAP. In this article, we review existing modelling strategies for spatial data warehousing at all three levels: conceptual, logical and implementation. We gather the most essential requirements for handling spatial data and use insights from spatial databases and GIS systems to design a meta-framework that would enable a user-centric modelling of complex data. Our strategy is to keep the user as the focal point in the analysis process and lay the foundation for clear data abstraction at different levels using multidimensional abstract data types and operations and thus support complex spatial data in data warehouses.

Development of Framework for Aggregation and Visualization of Three-Dimensional (3D) Spatial Data

“…Usually, these open-source projects are independent of each other, although GeoServer and MapServer will allow for clients to connect using a Web Map Service (WMS) protocol [42] from the OpenGeospatial Consortium (OGC) [34,43]. Techniques for performing complex analysis of information stored in a data and map warehouse has been developed, including such systems as the OGC [34,43] and Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) [35,44,45]. This provides specifications of interoperability among vendors [28,29].…”

“…If multiple map services for the same geographical region could be aggregated, the resulting map produced would include more spatial information. Therefore, the aggregation and fusion of spatial data in GIS is a useful feature in the environmental sciences, although this only marginally presents in current commercial GIS, primarily through ad-hoc solutions [33][34][35]. The successful use of this data depends to a large extent on the user's ability to access, integrate, and analyze the data [36][37][38].…”