CAREER: The STU Project: Database Integration of Space, Time, and Uncertainty as a Foundation for the Next Generation of GIS

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The goal of the project is to incorporate the three fundamental features of space, time, and uncertainty (STU) into the next generation of Geographical Information Systems (GIS). The STU incorporation greatly increases the expressive power of GIS and broadens the possible spectrum of future GIS applications. The STU project is devoted to the design, implementation, and database integration of new, computational, formal data models (type systems, algebras), query languages, application programming interfaces, and software tools for managing and querying space, space-time, space-uncertainty, and space-time-uncertainty objects. The goal is to create universal, application-neutral, and versatile tools serving as a basis for numerous GIS applications in which the inherent features of space, time, and uncertainty play an important role. These tools will be implemented as extension packages and embedded into extensible commercial database management systems (DBMS). The approach used in this project rests on several extensible algebras, which may cooperate with each other and make it possible to add new types and operations if necessary. The connection of the algebras to commercial DBMS will have a broad impact on the many domains that use large volumes of STU data by improving the processing methods for GIS-related applications. Different and large user groups get the chance to obtain full-fledged database support enhanced by one or several STU algebras. The educational component of this project includes creating and using GIS educational materials and involving students in research by providing students with an appropriate software and hardware environment for their research projects and further education. The project Web site http://www.cise.ufl.edu/research/SpaceTimeUncertainty/STU.html will be used for dissemination of both research and educational material.