Temporal analysis of geographic features is still only poorly supported by current GIS. There is a lack of the capabilities to model the temporal contents as well as analysis functions that are fully supporting the time dimension. The storage, examination and transfer of temporal referenced data is thereby unnecessarily difficult. More specifically an implementation of the existing concepts and standards for the modeling and storage of temporal geographic features are missing.
This paper presents a data model to handle temporal geographic information. The data model transfers the concepts of topology and geometry, which are well established for dealing with geospatial references, to handle the feature’s temporal references. Taking the Temporal Schema ISO 19108 as a basis, temporal objects, temporal reference systems and related functions are defined. A PostgreSQL/PostGIS implementation prototype showcases practical benefits of this way of temporal modeling.