A spatio-temporal data model for analysing personal biographies

Analysing the dynamics of urban and regional systems require methodologies for aggregating, in space and time, the consequences of the decisions of individuals and households. The life courses of most individuals are built around three interlocking successions of events: household history, residential trajectory and occupational career. As a result of societal evolution, these patterns of events became more complex during last decades, creating new challenges for urban and regional planners. Therefore, in-depth understanding of these intertwined sequences of events and decisions should provide useful information aimed at improving planning. The paper develops a modelling framework capable of handling complex life trajectories, by using standard database principles. A conceptual model describes successive or simultaneous events and statuses forming each of the three trajectories, as well as their intersections. This model is mapped into the MapInfo GIS, to handle successive and/or simultaneous home and workplace location changes. Example queries use data coming from a detailed retrospective survey of a spatially stratified random sample of professional workers living in the Quebec Metropolitan Area. The georelational database describes successions of events forming their biographies. The model produces data structures serving as input to “spatial” event history analyses, performed by regression techniques which consider “censoring” as well as time-varying and space-varying explanatory variables. A summary is given of this application issue, followed by an evaluation of relational GIS and database capabilities to handle such a project