Chorochronos - A Research Network for Spatiotemporal Database Systems
by Timos Sellis
CHOROCHRONOS is a three-year research program funded by the European
Commission under the Training and Mobility for Researchers (TMR) program.
The project commenced in August 1996. A major goal of Training and Mobility
for Researchers networks is to provide an excellent environment for the
training of young researchers. The CHOROCHRONOS sites will offer, during
the three years of the project, grants for a total of about 30 years to
young researchers having interests in topics related to Spatial and Temporal
Database Systems.
Spatial and temporal databases have been important sub-areas of database
research for a long time. Researchers in both areas have always felt that
there are important connections in the problems addressed by each area,
and the techniques and tools utilized for their solution. There are many
publications in temporal databases which conclude with the phrase the ideas
in this paper can be extended to spatial data management. But up to now,
little has been done, particularly in Europe, for the systematic interaction
and synergy of these two areas so that the respective claims can be formally
verified, refuted or appropriately qualified. CHOROCHRONOS aims to achieve
exactly this kind of interaction and synergy between European researchers.
The main objective of CHOROCHRONOS is to allow European researchers working
on spatial and temporal databases to achieve a higher understanding of
each other's work, integrate their results and methodologies, and advance
the state of the art in this area through an intensive three-year research
programme. This will culminate in the design and partial implementation
of an architecture for Spatiotemporal Database Systems (STDBMS). CHOROCHRONOS
will cover issues related to the ontology, structure and representation
for space and time, models and languages for STDBMS, graphical user interfaces
for spatiotemporal information, query processing algorithms, storage structures
and indexing techniques for spatiotemporal databases, and, based on results
on these issues, will propose a reference architecture for Spatiotemporal
Database Systems. The participants will also cooperate, through intensive
workshops, with researchers from other disciplines who are dealing with
temporal and spatial information in their research, and would benefit from
the development of an STDBMS. Finally, the network will stimulate training
and mobility of young researchers working in the areas of spatial and temporal
databases through an extensive training program.
Partnership
All participating nodes have an expertise either in spatial or in temporal
database systems, with a long and reputable research record. The groups
in Athens, Thessaloniki and L'Aquila have specialized on spatial data indexing
techniques and the analysis of spatial data structures. INRIA and Hagen
have a strong background in spatial query languages, graphical interfaces
and visual spatial query languages, multi-scale representation and transportation
networks, while ETH has a long experience with efficient algorithms, system
architectures and implementation. Vienna has been involved for a long time
with the definition of ontologies for space and time and formal models
of spatio-temporal geographic objects, while NTUA has a similar experience
with spatial knowledge representation and reasoning. In the field of temporal
databases, Aalborg has been involved in building methodologies for temporal
database design, as well as temporal data models and query languages; similarly
the UMIST team has been working on temporal relational database implementations
and more recently on temporal object databases, temporal data mining, building
ontologies for conceptual models and temporal relational constraint databases.
To complement these activities in temporal databases, the group at Milano
has been working on temporal reasoning, time granularity and on enhancing
existing commercial database management systems with functionalities for
time management.
Potential Applications
Spatiotemporal databases are an important technology for a number of
applications, such as Geographic Information Systems, remote sensing, environmental
information systems and CAD/CAM, and developments in this area are expected
to be highly relevant to industry. This is demonstrated by the number of
industrial cooperations that nodes of the network already have. Several
of these companies have already expressed their strong support for CHOROCHRONOS,
and it is expected that industrial cooperations will continue and will
be strengthened during the lifetime of this network.
Training Aspects
A total of 366 man-months of young researcher (ie doctoral and post-doctoral
researchers) effort will be funded by CHOROCHRONOS allowing talented young
researchers (especially recent PhDs) to remain in Europe and contribute
to the research area of spatiotemporal databases. At the same time it will
allow young researchers from network nodes to visit other nodes, learn
from their expertise and transfer this knowledge back to their home nodes.
Participants of the CHOROCHRONOS network are National Technical University
of Athens, Greece (coordinator); Aalborg University, Denmark; FernUniversität
Hagen, Germany; Università di L'Aquila, Italy; University of Manchester
Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), UK; Politecnico di Milano,
Italy; INRIA, France; Aristotle Univ. of Thessaloniki, Greece; Technical
University of Vienna, Austria; and SGFI-ETH, Switzerland.
For more information about CHOROCHRONOS and the positions available
at various network nodes, please visit the CHOROCHRONOS home page http://www.dbnet.ece.ntua.gr/projects/chorochronos.html.
Please contact:
Timos Sellis National Technical University of Athens
Tel: +30 1 7721601
E-mail: timos@cs.ntua.gr
