Understanding Urban Dynamics: the use of vector topographic databases and the creation of spatio-temporal databases

Résumé En

Understanding urban dynamics is an increasingly important challenge that can be answered in several ways. For many years, an important body of research has been tackling this problem in the literature of regional science, urban and economic geography, geomatics and related fields. But, whatever the field of research, in order to better understand urban dynamics, one needs to study the actual changes geographic objects undergo over time. Studying such changes requires the constitution of spatiotemporal databases containing data for each step of the considered evolutions. Unfortunately, building such spatio-temporal databases from existing topographic databases is a difficult process that requires tracking topographic objects in consecutive databases and creating links between them. The evolution of topographic objects which evolution has been tracked can be studied and then simulated. The observed changes the geographic objects undergo help up understand each topographic object's dynamics, their particularities on specific geographical areas as well as their evolutions in different time periods. Simulations can then be used to better understand the specific evolutions taking place on a given territory. Eventually, such simulations might be able to help the planning and policy making processes. The methodology presented in this paper includes the construction of spatio-temporal databases, the capture of historical topographic data from existing topographic maps, and a rich hierarchy creation process. Finally, the bases of our vector-based simulation platform are given.