Selected spatio-temporal data types and operations for a 3D/4D geological information system

The management of the evolution in time of large and complex 3D-models is not a trivial task and may largely surpass the data volume and complexity of conventional GIS. 3D objects changing in time have to be retrieved, inserted, processed and updated. It requires the development of application-specific spatiotemporal data types and operations. In this paper we present the design and the realisation of spatiotemporal data types and operations to be used in a typical 3D/4D-geological information system, and we give an outlook on our further research in the field of distributed spatiotemporal geoinformation systems.