Toward Spatiotemporal Patterns

Existing spatiotemporal data models and query languages offer only basic support to query changes of data. In particular, although these systems often allow the formulation of queries that ask for changes at particular time points, they fall short of expressing queries for sequences of such changes. In this chapter we propose the concept of spatiotemporal patterns as a systematic and scalable concept to query developments of objects and their relationships. Based on our previous work on spatiotemporal predicates, we outline the design of spatiotemporal patterns as a query mechanism to characterize complex object behaviors in space and time. We will not present a fully-fledged design. Instead, we will focus on deriving constraints that will allow spatiotemporal patterns to become well-designed composable abstractions that can be smoothly integrated into spatiotemporal query languages. Spatiotemporal patterns can be applied in many different areas of science, for example, in geosciences, geophysics, meteorology, ecology, and environmental studies. Since users in these areas typically do not have extended formal computer training, it is often difficult for them to use advanced query languages. A visual notation for spatiotemporal patterns can help solving this problem. In particular, since spatial objects and their relationships have a natural graphical representation, a visual notation can express relationships in many cases implicitly where textual notations require the explicit application of operations and predicates. Based on our work on the visualization of spatiotemporal predicates, we will sketch the design of a visual language to formulate spatiotemporal patterns.