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On the Design of an Unrestricted Data Unit (UDU) Conceptual Model for Geo-Spatial Data
By D.Semwayo and P.Matambanadzo
Price: [Z$30]

The maturing spatial information sciences have led to greater free flow of spatial
information. More than ever before, scientists within and between scientific disciplines appreciate the need to exchange environmental information to avert irreversible
disasters, hence the development of environmental information systems.

Existing ecological classification schema are seen as an impediment to environmenta
l data exchange between scientific disciplines. However, this paper will show that
the perceived different ecological classification systems, though different, are not
as incompatible as they might appear to be. It will be shown that the perceived
problem of classification schema incompatibility is one of object definition and data
structuring and lack of adequately structured meta-data.

The advent of the Internet and it’s associated technologies has led to immense
possibilities for data exchange. Coupled with those opportunities are perhaps
equally fright ening possibilities of the use of data of undefined quality obtained
from remote databases lacking adequate documentation on the data sets.

The development of an elegant model based on the concept of object hierarchies
and their associated behavioural attributes enables the capture, storage, and
retrieval of data objects in a way that enables the aggregation of the objects into
several ecological classification schema. Such framework would facilitate the
exchange of data between scientists and nations with seemingly different ecological classification systems. By carefully capturing meta-data incorporating it, and
propagating it through the different hierarchial schema via the development of
supporting logical model constructs, it is hoped that the data model will promote
the informed multiple use of data from differently focused ecological classification
and aggregation schemes from distributed sources.