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Geographic primitives: points (nodes); lines
(chains or arc); areas (vectors/polygons);
and continuous surfaces.
Data models (as opposed to data structures).
Difference between field and object models.
What is a field?
A conceptual model of geographic variation
One of several such models
The differences between this and other models are
conceptual, that is, they exist in the human mind.
Fields and objects are examples of the limited
ways in which humans imagine space.
Fields are also models of variation within a spatiotemporal frame. They are ways of containing and
representing space at one point in time.
Familiar fields
At every point in the frame there exists a
single value of a variable
e.g. a field of temperature
e.g. a field of land surface elevation
e.g. a field of land ownership
Dimensions of fields
For geographic information, the frame may be
defined by:
two spatial dimensions (x,y)
three spatial dimensions (x,y,z)
spatial dimensions and time (e.g. x,y,t)
The field variable (or attribute) can be thought of
as a function of these dimensions
e.g. z (x,y) might denote elevation as a function of
two spatial dimensions
generally, z(x) is the value (attribute) at the
location defined by the vector x.
Vector applications
very large vector databases have been built
for different purposes
vector tends to dominate in transportation,
utility, marketing applications
raster and vector both used in resource
management applications
Arcs 1
Polygons in one class or layer cannot overlap and must
exhaust the space of a layer. This corresponds with the
field view. Every space on the map is covered.
Every piece of boundary line is a common boundary
between two areas. This is defined topologically.
The stretch of common boundary between two junctions
(nodes) has various names
Edge is favored by graph theorists, "vertex" for the
junctions
Chain is the word officially sanctioned by the US National
Standard
Arcs 2
Arc is used by several systems including software
from ESRI.
Arcs have attributes which identify the polygons
on either side. These attributes are part of the
topological information.
These are referred to as "left" and "right" by
reference to the sequence in which the arc is coded
Arcs (chains/edges) are fundamental in vector GIS
Storing Areas
two ways of storing areas:
1) polygon storage
every polygon is stored as a sequence of
coordinates
although most boundaries are shared between two
adjacent areas, all are input and coded twice, once
for each adjacent polygon
the two different versions of each internal
boundary line may not coincide
Objects
The main competitor to the field
conceptualization: objects or discrete entities
Geography consists of an otherwise empty space
littered with discrete entities
As with fields, this is a question of
conceptualization, not digital representation
A point can lie in any number of entities,
including zero
Entities can be points, lines, areas, or volumes in
three or more dimensions
Objects 2
Entities can have any number of characteristics (attributes)
associated with them
The attributes apply to the entire entity
With object oriented data models, location information is
just stored as one of the objects properties.
This makes management of data input and output very
simple.
Object can also be used with rasters or grids.
In this instance, the object record would contain reference
to particular cells in the raster coverage.
Advantages of objects
Scientific models may work with fields, but
people may find discrete entities more acceptable,
More easily understood natural language provides
much better ways of talking about discrete entities
it is comparatively difficult to describe a field
As Helen Couclelis writes, "People manipulate
objects, but cultivate fields" (Couclelis, 1992)
Topology
Holes and islands:
areas often have "holes" or areas of different
attributes wholly enclosed within them. Well talk
more about them at the end of the lecture when we
talk about topology.
the database must be able to deal with these
correctly
this has not always been true of GIS products
Cartographic databases
By contrast, a database is called
"cartographic" if the above conditions are
absent
Objects can be manipulated individually
Relationships between them are unavailable
or are considered unimportant
Building topology
Building topology is often done when digitizing.
Once points are entered and geometric lines are
created, topology must be "built"
This involves calculating and encoding
relationships between the points, lines and areas
This information may be automatically coded into
attribute tables.