SBIR-STTR Award

A hierarchical dual-function terrain data set must bedesigned to ensure rapid access to complex data structures, allowfor frequent data modification and be compatible with existingGeographical Information System (GIS) applications. Althoughwidely used, conventional database management systems haveshortcomings in their ability to handle geographic informationefficiently. An object-oriented database (OODB) design isproposed for the development of a hierarchical dual-functionterrain data set. To prove the feasibility of this approach,tasks are outlined that together will develop and test acompilation strategy that will convert an existing data set intoan object-based data set. In addition, the concept of providingthe OODB the ability to convert itself into a format compatiblewith existing GIS applications is explored. The enhanced speedand flexibility of an OODB promises to find widespread use in thegrowing commercial and government GIS market. Data developmentand maintenance costs will decrease due to the increasedportability and natural extensibility of the OODB inaccommodating new data types such as multimedia.

The ability of a Geographic Information System (GIS) to meet user requirements is dependent on the content and format of its spatially referenced geographic data set. The United States Army has made available two distinct prototype Vector Product Format (VPF) data sets for use in this Phase II research: Vector Smart Map (VMap) which is superior for display and Interim Terrain Data (ITD) which is better suited for analysis. An automated map merging system (or conflation system) is proposed that will combine the strengths of the ITD and VMap data sets into a single data set that allows the user to customize the data set's VPF structure and reconcile the inconsistencies found when merging the source data sets together. The described conflation system will minimize user intervention in the match and merging processes in order to facilitate the conflation of large databases. The conflation system will be developed as an object-relational database management system application to obtain the benefits of object-orientation while maintaining compatibility with VPF's georelational data model. A merged data set will be generated and demonstrated to show how conflation results in a data set with increased information content, higher data quality, greater functionality and improved performance.