TY - JOUR
T1 - Spatiotemporal data representation and its effect on the performance of spatial analysis in a cyberinfrastructure environment - A case study with raster zonal analysis
AU - Song, Miaomiao
AU - Li, WenWen
AU - Zhou, Bin
AU - Lei, Ting
N1 - Funding Information:
This work is supported by National Science Foundation ( PLR-1349259 ; BCS-1455349 ; PLR-1504432 ), the Open Geospatial Consortium , and Key Laboratory of Geological Information Technology, China Ministry of Land and Resources .
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Elsevier Ltd.
PY - 2016/2/1
Y1 - 2016/2/1
N2 - This paper conducts a systematic research to uncover the impact of spatiotemporal data representation on the performance of raster analysis in a cyberinfrastructure environment. Two broad categories of data organization based on file system and database system are presented and discussed. In particular, these include five specific approaches of storing time-series raster data involving tiling (partitioning the entire image file into non-overlapping pieces), stacking (compositing multiple single-band images into a large multi-band image) techniques, and a combination of tiling and stacking in files or database tables. Raster zonal statistics, which have been used to support a variety of GIS applications ranging from watershed analysis to summarizing forest products, is selected as an example raster analysis algorithm. A series of experiments were conducted to evaluate the performance of the five proposed approaches using different spatial and spatiotemporal queries. The results show that spatiotemporal data representation, though largely ignored in the design of a cyberinfrastructure system, does play an important role in system performance. Specifically, tiling techniques with the support of spatial database outperforms all other approaches, especially those adopting stacking techniques in the data organization. For illustration, the best raster analysis solution was implemented and integrated into an operational cyberinfrastructure in the context of providing spatial decision support in polar science. We expect this work to offer insights to develop efficient cyberinfrastructure modules to support spatial analysis through a thorough analysis of spatiotemporal data representation.
AB - This paper conducts a systematic research to uncover the impact of spatiotemporal data representation on the performance of raster analysis in a cyberinfrastructure environment. Two broad categories of data organization based on file system and database system are presented and discussed. In particular, these include five specific approaches of storing time-series raster data involving tiling (partitioning the entire image file into non-overlapping pieces), stacking (compositing multiple single-band images into a large multi-band image) techniques, and a combination of tiling and stacking in files or database tables. Raster zonal statistics, which have been used to support a variety of GIS applications ranging from watershed analysis to summarizing forest products, is selected as an example raster analysis algorithm. A series of experiments were conducted to evaluate the performance of the five proposed approaches using different spatial and spatiotemporal queries. The results show that spatiotemporal data representation, though largely ignored in the design of a cyberinfrastructure system, does play an important role in system performance. Specifically, tiling techniques with the support of spatial database outperforms all other approaches, especially those adopting stacking techniques in the data organization. For illustration, the best raster analysis solution was implemented and integrated into an operational cyberinfrastructure in the context of providing spatial decision support in polar science. We expect this work to offer insights to develop efficient cyberinfrastructure modules to support spatial analysis through a thorough analysis of spatiotemporal data representation.
KW - Performance
KW - Polar cyberinfrastructure
KW - Polar science
KW - Spatiotemporal data representation
KW - Web service
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U2 - 10.1016/j.cageo.2015.11.005
DO - 10.1016/j.cageo.2015.11.005
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84947433086
SN - 0098-3004
VL - 87
SP - 11
EP - 21
JO - Computers and Geosciences
JF - Computers and Geosciences
ER -