Providing multi-scale consistency for multi-scale geospatial data

Abstract

We are immersed in a world in which we constantly deal (and cope) with objects and phenomena in a variety of scales in space and time. With the increase in collaborative and inter-disciplinary research, there appeared a growing need for handling data in multiple scales and representations, within a single environment. The so called multi-scale environments must guarantee the manipulation of information while ensuring consistency. This paper is concerned with the challenges of managing data in multiple scales, while preserving consistency across scales. Its main contributions are the following: (a) the specification of generic, extensible multi-scale integrity constraints; and (b) the implementation of a prototype based on data versioning, which supports the maintenance of these constraints. This prototype was tested using watershed data from Brazil.