A Problem-oriented Approach for DEM Data Management and Manipulation

For the last decades, GIS software technologies have made tremendous development and applied to many special fields when their targets are relevant to geographical locations. But the basis of cartographic mapping of GIS is a restriction for more development in GIS data modelling, storage and manipulation. Recently, much attention is being paid on ORDBMS(Object Relational Database Management System) to represent and manage GIS Data. New approaches have earned acceptance in many research communities and several proposals have emerged in commercial software for solving the management and manipulation on GIS vector data. Though the storage and management of field-based model data (e. g. raster, DEM, TIN) have got less achievement and people still use files and procedural ways to manipulation field-based GIS data in common applications. In this paper a new structure model using ORDBMS technology for field-based data's storage and management was proposed on the basis of full discussion on several GIS data management technologies, then a problem-oriented approach for DEM data management and manipulation was designed and implemented through open source software systems PostgreSQL and Python language. Experimental examples of different DEM data sources were stored, managed and used by using the extended spatial database system. The experiments illustrated that this solution would be a useful supplement to spatial database and it provided an effective way to DEM data management and analysis, and support the interoperability between vector data and field data.