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Transcript of Philadelphia, May 2–4, 2005 Integrating GIS and OLAP: a New Way to Unlock Geospatial Data for...
Philadelphia, May 2–4, 2005
www.locationintelligence.net
Integrating GIS and OLAP:a New Way to Unlock Geospatial Datafor Decision-making
Dr. Yvan BedardProfessorLaval UniversityQuebec City, Canada
Industrial Research Chairin Geospatial Databases
for Decision-Support
Philadelphia, May 2–4, 2005
www.locationintelligence.net
Presentation Plan
• Origins and characteristics of Spatial OLAP (SOLAP) applications
• Approaches to develop SOLAP applications (definition, pros/cons)– GIS-centric– OLAP-centric– Integrated SOLAP
• Benefits and future directions
Philadelphia, May 2–4, 2005
www.locationintelligence.net
Origins of SOLAP
• Organisations worldwide invest hundreds of millions of dollars annually to acquire large amounts of data about the land, its resources and uses
• These data however prove difficult to use by managers who need:– aggregated information - trends analysis– spatial comparisons - space-time correlations– fast synthesis over time - unexpected queries– interactive exploration - geogr. knowledge
discovery
Philadelphia, May 2–4, 2005
www.locationintelligence.net
Origins of SOLAP
• GIS data have a transactional nature– Transactional databases are oriented towards
data:• acquisition• storing• updating• integrity checking• minimal querying, with the help of an expert
Ex. Normalized relational databases
Philadelphia, May 2–4, 2005
www.locationintelligence.net
Origins of SOLAP• Decision-makers need data with an
« analytical » nature – Decision-support databases are oriented
towards data aggregation, data summarization with several levels of granularity in time, space and themes
• Integrating GIS and OLAP has become a very promising field. It offers new possibilities that are just starting to emerge.
Philadelphia, May 2–4, 2005
www.locationintelligence.net
Origins of SOLAP
• BI offers the foundations to build the data rich environment needed for SOLAP
DBMS
Decisional nature of data
Geospatial nature of data
Geospatial
Non-geospatial
Not Aggregatedaggregated
GIS
DWDM
OLAP
GDWGDM
SOLAP
DW= data warehouseDM = datamartG = Geospatial
Philadelphia, May 2–4, 2005
www.locationintelligence.net
Origins of SOLAP• 1996-2000: pionneering
– early prototypes in universities• Laval U. - Simon Fraser U. - U. Minnesota
• 2001-2004: early adopters– advanced prototypes in universities– first applications in industry
• 2005-... : maturing– larger number of ad hoc applications– SOLAP technologies to facilitate the development of
SOLAP applications
Philadelphia, May 2–4, 2005
www.locationintelligence.net
Characteristics of SOLAP Applications• Provides a high level of interactivity
– response times < 10 seconds independently of• the level of data aggregation• today's vs historic data• measured vs simulated data
• Ease-of-use and intuitiveness– requires no SQL-type query language– no need to know the underlying data structure
• Supports intuitive, interactive and synchronized exploration of spatio-temporal data for different levels of granularity in maps, tables and charts that are synchronized at will
Philadelphia, May 2–4, 2005
www.locationintelligence.net
Experiences since 1996• Besides developing theoretical concepts, we have
experimented with several technologies to build SOLAP applications
• Experiments in:– forestry - agriculture - public health– transport - search & rescue - sports– recruitment - archeology - etc.
• Experiments with:– MapX - ArcGIS - Geomedia - SoftMap– Oracle- Access - SQL-Server – Proclarity - Cognos - etc.
Philadelphia, May 2–4, 2005
www.locationintelligence.net
Example: Quebec Public Health
•K-MapX•ProClarity•MS-SQL Server•VBScript development
Analysing hospitali-sation and death statistics with regards to respira-tory diseases, cancer, etc.
Philadelphia, May 2–4, 2005
www.locationintelligence.net
Example: Transport Quebec
•Geomedia WebMap•ProClarity•MS-SQL Server•VB development
Analysing accident quantities and severities with regards to road conditions, traffic, topography, etc.
Philadelphia, May 2–4, 2005
www.locationintelligence.net
Example: Montmorency Forest
•ArcGIS 3D•ProClarity•MS-SQL Server•VB development
3D analysis of forest stands with regards to tree species, age, drainage, etc.
Philadelphia, May 2–4, 2005
www.locationintelligence.net
Results• Applications using GIS+OLAP were limited
– insufficient data exploration capabilities– limited visualization customization– too slow in certain cases to support interactivity– do not always fit in the map updating workflow
• Applications required months of programming• We decided to design and develop our own
integrated SOLAP technology in Java – commercial name: JMap Spatial OLAP Extension
Philadelphia, May 2–4, 2005
www.locationintelligence.net
Example: Laval Univ. recruitment
•JMap Spatial OLAP•Oracle 10g + spatial
Analysing students statistics with regards to origin, last diploma, language, etc.
Philadelphia, May 2–4, 2005
www.locationintelligence.net
Example: Olympic sports
•JMap Spatial OLAP•Oracle 10g + spatial
Analysing performances with regards to position, trajectory, weather conditions, technique, etc.
Philadelphia, May 2–4, 2005
www.locationintelligence.net
Example: Canadian Coast Guard•JMap Spatial OLAP•Oracle 10g + spatial
Analysing search and rescue data with regards to position, boat characteristics, weather conditions, pilot experience, etc.
Philadelphia, May 2–4, 2005
www.locationintelligence.net
Approaches to Develop SOLAP Applications
• Ad hoc, proprietary programming specific to one application
• Combining GIS + OLAP capabilities– GIS-centric– OLAP-centric– Integrated SOLAP
-The dominant tool offers its full capabilities but gets minimal capabilities from the other tool-GUI provided by the dominant tool
Philadelphia, May 2–4, 2005
www.locationintelligence.net
Approaches to Develop SOLAP Applications
• Ad hoc, proprietary programming– typically used to develop one application for a very
specific need without using OLAP and GIS libraries• Advantages
– can perfectly fit the needs, no less no more• Disadvantages
– very expensive– very long delays before delivering– hard to maintain– very difficult to modify for other purposes– silo application
Philadelphia, May 2–4, 2005
www.locationintelligence.net
Approaches to Develop SOLAP Applications
• OLAP-centric– Application developed along the OLAP tool and server– OLAP functions are predominant and GIS functions are
kept to a minimum• zoom, pan, select, layer on/off for example• sometimes, minimal spatial drill
• Advantages– supports OLAP exploration and visualization– uses OLAP server capabilities– OK for simple map viewing and exploration need
Philadelphia, May 2–4, 2005
www.locationintelligence.net
Approaches to Develop SOLAP Applications
OLAP-centric• Disadvantages
– requires complex analysis to provide an elegant and efficient user interface
– typically requires months of programming• recent alliances between OLAP and GIS providers simplify
this development
– limited number of spatial dimensions and analysis
– limited interaction and difficult map updates
Philadelphia, May 2–4, 2005
www.locationintelligence.net
Approaches to Develop SOLAP Applications
• GIS-centric– Application developed along the GIS and a DBMS– GIS functions are predominant and OLAP functions are
kept to a minimum• drill down and up in a table for example
• Advantages– supports GIS thematic mapping– uses spatial analysis capabilities– OK when maps are of primary importance while
table/chart viewing, tabular exploration needs are simple
Philadelphia, May 2–4, 2005
www.locationintelligence.net
Approaches to Develop SOLAP Applications
GIS-centric• Disadvantages
– requires complex analysis to provide an elegant and efficient user interface
– typically requires months of programming• recent alliances between OLAP and GIS providers simplify
this development
– must include explicit data to manage the spatial dimension hierarchies in the data cube
– limited interaction
Philadelphia, May 2–4, 2005
www.locationintelligence.net
Approaches to Develop SOLAP Applications
• Integrated SOLAP– high level of functionnality for both spatial and non-spatial data
and views– sophisticated integration and synchronization of OLAP and GIS
functions
• Advantages– better user interface– more interactive and sophisticated functions– works the same way in maps, charts and tables– can be implemented in hours without programming by using a
generic stand-alone software built especially to develop SOLAP applications: SOLAP technology (ex. JMap Spatial OLAP)
• works with or without underlying GIS and OLAP
Philadelphia, May 2–4, 2005
www.locationintelligence.net
Approaches to Develop SOLAP Applications
Integrated SOLAP• Advantages
– fits in the map update workflow– supports spatial analysis– synchronized exploration of data between maps, tables and
charts
• Disadvantages– when not using SOLAP technology, it requires complex analysis
to provide an elegant and efficient user interface– when not using SOLAP technology, it typically requires several
months of programming• recent alliances between OLAP and GIS providers simplify this development
Philadelphia, May 2–4, 2005
www.locationintelligence.net
Benefits of SOLAP applications
• In our projects, positive results in many applications have been achieved, such as:– cutting by a factor of 10 the time required to produce maps
and reports that summarize key information– allowing new users having never heard of GIS to produce
hundred of thousands of synchronized maps, reports and tables on demand with only three hours of training
– providing keyboardless access to geospatial data at different levels of detail with a facility never achieved before
Philadelphia, May 2–4, 2005
www.locationintelligence.net
Metadata+
Ontologies
GeospatialData
Acquisition
BusinessIntelligence
InteroperableDatabases
Web Mapping
SolutionProviders
DVP
R&D inGIS + BI
Dataproviders
Users
Chair
HQ
Future Directions: enrich the integration of "S"+"OLAP" + related products
Kheops
Intelec
Holonics
DefenceCanada
TransportQuebec
NRCan
Syntell
Quebec Hydro
New NSERCIndustrial Chairon BI+Geomatics3M US$2005-09
Laval U.
Philadelphia, May 2–4, 2005
www.locationintelligence.net
Conclusion• This presentation has
– introduced SOLAP• characteristics• origins• examples
– presented 4 approaches to develop SOLAP applications• ad hoc - OLAP-centric - GIS-centric - Integrated SOLAP
– identified advantages and disadvantages of each approach to help identify the best strategy to combine GIS and OLAP for a given need
• All solutions have advantages and inconvenients, but 8 years of experimentation has proved that using an off-the-shelf integrated SOLAP technology significantly improves the results while leading to a major reduction in time and development cost
• More R&D will bring even better solutions
Philadelphia, May 2–4, 2005
www.locationintelligence.net
Thank you !
Industrial Research Chairin Geospatial Databases
for Decision-Support http://mdspatialdb.chair.scg.ulaval.ca
http://www.crg.ulaval.ca
http://sirs.scg.ulaval.ca/yvanbedard/Yvan Bedard, PhD