Geographical Information System “meets” Environmental Data Management – Exemplified at practical projects

Abstract

Abstract The most practical Geographical Information Systems provide the data based on spatial aspects. They define spatial feature classes with additional thematic attributes. That’s why in practice you find very often different feature classes for one real world object, e.g. one street both as line-object and as polygon-object – and the same attributes are saved two times with inconsistency. But UML (Unified Modelling Language) and all UML-based data structures (among others the INSPIRE data specifications) define an object oriented data management. That means e.g.: • one real object is one information object • all objects can have more and different geometries • the geometry is to handle like an attribute • the handling of generalisations and heredities • the need to manage versioning and historiography. And the practical use cases require that object oriented structures too. In the following the necessity and innovative solutions should be presented by 5 examples.