Using the DBV Model to Maintain Versions of Multi-scale Geospatial Data

Work on multi-scale issues concerning geospatial data presents countless challenges that have been long attacked by GIScience researchers. Indeed, a given real world problem must often be studied at distinct scales in order to be solved. Most implementation solutions go either towards generalization (and/or virtualization of distinct scales) or towards linking entities of interest across scales. In this context, the possibility of maintaining the history of changes at each scale is another factor to be considered. This paper presents our solution to these issues, which accommodates all previous research on handling multiple scales into a unifying framework. Our solution builds upon a specific database version model – the multiversion MVDB – which has already been successfully implemented in several geospatial scenarios, being extended here to support multi-scale research. The paper also presents our implementation of of a framework based on the model to handle and keep track of multi-scale data evolution. multi-scale, database versions, MVDB model