Moving Objects in Databases and GIS: State-of-the-Art and Open Problems

The field of moving objects databases (Güting and Schneider 2005) has received a lot of research interest in recent years. This technology enables the user to model, store, retrieve, and query the movements of spatial objects over time, called moving objects, and to ask queries about such movements in a database context. A moving object represents the continuous evolution of a spatial object over time. In some cases, only the time-dependent locations are of interest, and the authors speak of moving points. Examples are mobile phone users, whales, ships, planes, terrorists, cars, space-crafts, satellites, and missiles. In other cases, also the time-dependent shape and/or areal extent, which can grow or shrink, need to be handled, and the authors speak of moving regions.