An Access Method for Objects Moving among Fixed Regions

Gilberto Gutiérrez, Gonzalo Navarro and Andrea Rodríguez

We propose a spatio-temporal access method for objects that move through a set of fixed and disjoint regions. The proposal is based on an R-tree, on a temporal access method and on a hashing scheme. With our method it is possible to respond to queries of the timeslice and interval types as well as queries about the trajectory that an object has followed. It is also possible to process spatio-temporal queries with open time intervals, that is, queries about objects whose final duration in a determined position is unknown. This characteristic allows maintaining an index in which operations that can modify the underlying data structure can be mixed with query operations.