Managing uncertainty in moving objects databases

Abstract

This article addresses the problem of managing Moving Objects Databases (MODs) which capture the inherent imprecision of the information about the moving object's location at a given time. We deal systematically with the issues of constructing and representing the trajectories of moving objects and querying the MOD. We propose to model an uncertain trajectory as a three-dimensional (3D) cylindrical body and we introduce a set of novel but natural spatio-temporal operators which capture the uncertainty and are used to express spatio-temporal range queries. We devise and analyze algorithms for processing the operators and demonstrate that the model incorporates the uncertainty in a manner which enables efficient querying, thus striking a balance between the modeling power and computational efficiency. We address some implementation aspects which we experienced in our DOMINO project, as a part of which the operators that we introduce have been implemented. We also report on some experimental observations of a practical relevance.