Content

§ Data Model Concepts

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 §Data Model Concepts
§ Data represent a simplified view of the real world
§ Physical entities or phenomena are approximated by data in GIS
§ Spatial location, extent of the physical entities, non-spatial
properties
§ Entity is represented by spatial feature or spatial object
§ Essential characteristics are also defined for each entity
§ Objects are abstractions in a spatial database
§ Spatial objects are the objects in a spatial database representing real-world
entities with associated attributes
§Data Model Concepts
Spatial data model is means of representing and manipulating spatially-referenced information
§Data Model Concepts
 Data model is the objects in a spatial database plus the
relationships among them
 Coordinates are used to define the spatial location and
extent of geographic objects
 Attribute/non-spatial data are linked with coordinate data to
define each spatial object in the spatial database
 Most conceptualizations or models view the world as set of
layers
 Each layer organizes the spatial and attribute data for a given
set of cartographic/spatial objects
 E.g. Lake, river, road, etc.
 Thematic layers in GIS databases

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§Data Model Concepts

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§Data Model Concepts
 Attribute data are categorized as nominal, ordinal, or
interval/ratio
 Nominal attributes: variables that provide descriptive
information about an object
 E.g. Color, vegetation type, city name, owner of parcel, soil
type etc.
 Nominal attributes can also be images, film clips, audio,
or other descriptive information
 E.g. Images of buildings or surroundings in real estate
management database

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§Data Model Concepts
 Ordinal attributes: variables that imply rank order or scale by
their values
 Ordinal attribute may be descriptive
 E.g. small, medium, large,
 Low, moderate, high,
 ranging from 1 to 5 (soil erosion level ), etc.
 Interval/ratio attributes are used for numeric items where
both order and absolute difference in magnitudes are
reflected in the number
 Real number on a linear scale
 E.g. area, length, weight, height, depth, value, etc. are
represented by interval/ration variables

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§Data Model Concepts
 Spatial objects are represented in two most
common spatial data models
Spatial data models begin with
conceptualization, how you will represent the
real world phenomena or entities
 E.g. a road can be represented as lines; river as
line or polygon; city and towns as point or polygon,
etc.
 The road to include the road type (e.g.: highway,
street, etc. or gravel, paved/ asphalted, etc.); width
of road,
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§Data Model Concepts
 There are two main data models or conceptualizations
used for spatial data: Vector data model and Raster data
model
 Vector data model use discrete objects such as point,
lines and polygons to represent the geometry of the real-
world entities, discrete entities
E.g. a road, river, city and towns, lakes or wetlands,
farm land, etc.
 Raster data model represents continuous phenomena
that may change continuously across a region
E.g. Elevation, rainfall, temperature, soil moisture, etc.
 Raster model uses grid cells for representing continuous
phenomena
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§Data Model Concepts

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§Data Model Concepts

Raster vs. Vector Data Model

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§Data Model Concepts

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§Data Model Concepts
 Vector data model and Raster data model can represent
same phenomena
E.g. Elevation represented as surface (continuous field) using
raster grid or as lines representing contours of equal elevation
(discrete objects), or as points of height (Z values).
 Data can be converted from one conceptual view to
another
E.g. raster data layer can be derived from contour lines, point
cloud
 Selection of raster or vector model depends on the
application or type of operations to be performed
E.g. Elevation represented as surface (continuous field) in raster -
to easily determine slope, or
as discrete contours if printed maps of topography

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§Vector Data Model
 There are three basic types of vector objects: points, lines and
polygons
 Vector data model uses sets of coordinates and associated
attribute data to define discrete objects
 Point objects in spatial database represent location of entities
considered to have no dimension
 Simplest type of spatial objects
E.g. wells, sampling points, poles, telephone towers, etc.
 Line objects are used to represent linear features using
ordered set of coordinate pairs
E.g. infrastructure networks (transport networks: highways, railroads,
etc.) ; utility networks: (gas, electric, telephone, water, etc. ); airline
networks: hubs and routes, etc.); natural networks such as river
channels

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 §Vector Data Model
 Polygon objects in spatial database represent entities
which covers an area
E.g. lakes, Buildings, parcels, etc.
 Boundaries may be defined by natural phenomena (e.g.
lake), or by man made features (e.g census tracts,
neighborhoods)
E.g. Land cover data: forest, wetlands, urban areas, etc.
Soil data – soil types

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 §Raster Data Model
 Raster Data Model defines the world as a regular set of cells in a
uniform grid pattern
 Cells are square and evenly spaced in the x and y directions
 Each cell represent attribute values and cell location of phenomena or
entities
 Cell dimension specifies the length and width of the cell in surface units
 Raster data models represent continuous phenomena or spatial
features
 E.g. Elevation/DEM, bathymetry, precipitation, slope, etc.
 Raster data model may also be used to represent discrete data
 E.g. Land cover: forest, wetlands, urban areas
 Rasters are digital aerial photographs, imagery from satellites, digital
pictures, or even scanned maps

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§TIN Data Model
 Triangulated Irregular Network (TIN) is data model
commonly used to represent terrain heights
 x, y, and z locations, used as measured points in
TIN
 Result in TIN composed of nodes, lines and
triangulated faces
 TIN used for digital elevation models (DEM) or
digital terrain models (DTM)
 Very efficient way of representing topography

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§TIN Data Model

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 §Scale and Resolution
 Scale is the relationship between distance on a map and
the corresponding distance on the earth
 The ratio of distance on a map, to actual ground distance
 Expressed in a ratio: e.g. 1:100,000; 1:1,000
 1:100,000 means one unit of distance on the map represents
100,000 of the same units of distance on the earth; i.e. 1 cm
on the map equals 100,000 cm (1 km) on the ground
 Large scale maps show more detail; Small scale maps show
less detail, but cover large parts of the earth
 Smaller denominator, larger scale or small map-to-ground
ratio, small scale

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§Scale and Resolution
 GIS data is stored in a very different way than paper
map data, map scale is different
 Paper maps have fixed map scale
 GIS maps don’t have fixed map scale
 You can zoom in until the screen displays a square
meter or less, or zoom out until the screen displays the
entire earth
 This means that geographic data in a GIS doesn't really
have a defined 'map scale'

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§Scale and Resolution
 Resolution is the size of the smallest feature that can be
represented in a surface
 Ground resolution, spatial resolution
 Spatial resolution of an image is an indication of the size
of a pixel in terms of ground dimensions.
 A spatial resolution of 30 meters means that one pixel
represents an area 30 meters by 30 meters on the
ground
 High resolution: features more closely resemble real-
world features; small objects can be detected
 Low resolution: features simplified or not shown at all;
only large features are visible

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§Spatial relationships
 Spatial relationships
between features
 Do they overlap?
 Is one contained by the other?
 Does one cross the other?
 Geometries can be spatially
related in different ways

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Spatial Operations
§ Spatial operations use geometry functions to take spatial data as input, analyze the
data, then produce output data that is the derivative of the analysis performed on the
input data
§ E.g. Buffer, clip, intersection, union, dissolve, merge, etc.

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Spatial Operations
Buffer (Analysis)

§ Creates buffer polygons around input features to a specified

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Spatial Operations
Clip (Analysis)
§ Clip: Extracts input features that overlay the clip features
§ Creating a new feature class: Area of Interest (AOI), or study area
§ The Output Feature Class will contain all the attributes of the Input Features

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Spatial Operations
Clip (Data Management )
§ Cuts out a portion of a raster dataset, mosaic dataset, or image service layer.
§ Allows you to extract a portion of a raster dataset based on a template extent
§ The clipped area is specified either by a rectangular envelope using
minimum and maximum x- and y-coordinates or by using an output extent
file

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Spatial Operations

§ Intersect (Analysis)
§ Computes a geometric intersection of the input features.
§ Features or portions of features which overlap in all layers and/or feature classes will
be written to the output feature class.
§ Input Features must be simple features: point, multipoint, line, or polygon

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Spatial Operations
Dissolve (Data Management)
§ Aggregates features based on specified attributes

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