Arcgis Marine Data Model Reference
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
ArcGIS Marine Data Model Reference ArcGIS Marine Data Model (June 2003) This document provides an Dawn J. Wright, Oregon State U. overview of the ArcGIS Marine Patrick N. Halpin, Duke U. Data Model. This model focuses on Michael Blongewicz, DHI important features of the ocean realm, both natural and manmade, Steve Grisé, ESRI Redlands with a view towards the many Joe Breman, ESRI Redlands applications of marine GIS data. ArcGIS Data Models TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................... 4 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 5 Why a Marine Data Model?.................................................................................................... 6 Intended Audience and Scope of the Model............................................................................ 8 The Process of Building a Data Model ..................................................................................... 10 Final Data Model Content, Purpose and Use........................................................................ 14 Data Model Description ........................................................................................................... 16 Overview ............................................................................................................................. 16 Conceptual Framework..................................................................................................... 16 Core Packages ................................................................................................................. 19 Synthesis.......................................................................................................................... 21 Marine Data Model Object Class Glossary............................................................................... 21 SAMPLE DATA....................................................................................................................... 22 Generic Marine Data Sources .............................................................................................. 22 Sample Geodatabase Sources............................................................................................. 25 Implementing the Model: Case Study Applications................................................................... 25 A Preliminary Note About Prototyping a Design.................................................................... 25 A Note on Cross References to Existing Standards ................................................................. 26 References ............................................................................................................................. 27 List of Acronynms Commonly Used with Marine GIS Data Sets ............................................... 30 Overview of ArcGIS Object and Geodatabase Concepts.......................................................... 33 Objects ................................................................................................................................ 33 Features .............................................................................................................................. 34 Feature Data Set.................................................................................................................. 34 Relationships ....................................................................................................................... 34 2 • ArcGIS Marine Data Model ArcGIS Marine Data Model • 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The authors gratefully acknowledge the following people for providing comments and input on the data model and supporting requirements, as well as for reviewing drafts of this document: Simon Evans, ESRI, Member of Marine Data Model Working Group Jason Marshall, NOAA CSC, Member of Marine Data Model Working Group Eric Treml, Duke University, Member of Marine Data Model Working Group International Review and Case Study Team Members listed as http://dusk.geo.orst.edu/djl/arcgis/people.html This effort could not have been completed without the benefit of their participation. We also acknowledge the support and reviews of the FGDC Marine and Coastal Spatial Data Subcommittee for review and feedback related to design efforts and linkages between the model, the Hydrography Data Content Standard for Inland and Coastal Waterways and the broader Coastal National Spatial Data Infrastructure. And finally, we acknowledge the support and encouragement of Kevin Curtin, lead author of the UNETRANS Data Model, and Nancy Von Meyer, lead author of the Parcels Data Model. 4 • ArcGIS Marine Data Model Introduction Just as fish adapted to the terrestrial environment by evolving into amphibians, so GIS must adapt to the marine and coastal environment by evolution and adaptation. -- Goodchild (2000) Indeed, it appears that marine GIS has finally “arrived” as a well-established application domain. The initial impetus for developing a marine specialty in GIS was the need to automate the production of nautical charts and to more efficiently manage the prodigious amounts of data that are routinely collected at sea. But the application domain has progressed from applications that merely collect and display data to complex simulation, modeling, and the development of new coastal and marine research methods and concepts. The domain has triumphed by successfully adapting to a technology originally designed for land-based applications, and structured in a 2-dimensional framework that has never perfectly matched the ocean environment. Fortunately, the "state-of-the-art" has continually improved as increased commercial, academic, and political interest in coastal regions, oceans, and marginal seas have spurred fundamental improvements in the toolbox of GIS, while extending the methodological framework for marine applications. Many challenges remain, such as addressing the multiple dimensionality and dynamism of oceanographic data, handling the temporal and dynamic properties of shoreline and coastal processes, dealing with the inherent fuzziness of boundaries in the ocean, the great need for spatial data structures that vary their relative positions and values over time, and last, but not least, the development of effective conceptual and data models of marine objects and phenomena. For a full discussion of these and many any other research issues, the reader is referred to by Li and Saxena (1993), Bartlett (1993a and b), Lockwood and Li (1995), Wright and Goodchild (1997) and Wright and Bartlett (2000 and references therein). ArcGIS Marine Data Model • 5 Why a Marine Data Model? As noted by Bartlett (2000), one of the most important lessons to be learned from collective experience in the application domain of marine GIS, both published and unpublished, is the importance of rigorous data modeling before attempting to implement a GIS database. Indeed, data models lie at the very heart of GIS, as they determine the ways in which real-world phenomena may best be represented in digital form. With regard to ESRI products, many marine and coastal practitioners and organizations have invested in the coverage data model. Although this has largely been successful, coverages have important shortcomings. For example, features are aggregated into homogenous collections of points, lines, and polygons with generic, 1- and 2-dimensional "behavior" (Zeiler, 1999). And there is no way to distinguish between behaviors within feature classes: e.g., the behavior of point representing a marker buoy is identical to that of a point representing a pulsing transponder; the behavior of a line representing a road is identical to the behavior of a line representing a dynamic shoreline. ArcGIS 8 introduces a new object-oriented data model called the geodatabase, in which GIS features are "smarter", i.e., they can be endowed with real-world behaviors for individual objects within the same categories, and any sort of relationship may be defined among them (for an overview of ArcGIS object and geodatabase concepts see the Appendix or Zeiler, 1999). This has wonderful implications for marine and coastal applications, but questions and concerns in the community have surfaced (not unlike those posed by the forestry community; FSIG, 2000): Given the existing investment, how and when should one make the transition to object-oriented ArcGIS 8? How well are marine application domain requirements met in the geodatabase structure now? What can we do as a group to understand the technology and identify requirements? What are the potential benefits? An ArcGIS Data Model working group was initiated to help address these concerns and to support the marine community in making this important transition. 6 • ArcGIS Marine Data Model A key advantage of an ArcGIS data model is that it should help users to take fuller advantage of the most advanced manipulation and analysis capabilities of ArcGIS, particularly the ability to capture the behavior of real-world objects in a geodatabase, and the support of more complex rules that can be built into the geodatabase. For users, an ArcGIS data model provides a basic template for implementing GIS projects (i.e., inputting, formatting, geoprocessing, and sharing data, creating maps, performing analyses, etc.); for developers, it provides a basic framework for writing program code and maintaining applications.