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28.2

SPATIAL DATA MODELS: OBJECT AND FIELD REPRESENTATIONS

In general, humans perceive the geographic world as a set of discrete entities and continuous fields. Discrete entities, often simply referred to as objects, are distinguishable by their independent and localized existence; their relative permanence of identity, attribute, and shape; and their manipulability. They are identified as individuals before any attributes they may possess (Couclelis, 1992). On the other hand, a continuous field describes the spatial variation of a geographic variable in a spacetime frame. Most fields are scalar fields that only have a single value of the geographic variable at every point in the spacetime frame. When a geographic variable is directional (such as wind), it may form a vector field to provide a distribution of directions with or without values in the frame (Goodchild, 1997a,b). Both objects and fields are represented well in topographic maps (Figure 28.1) where discrete entities like towns, roads, and lakes are marked by points, lines, and polygons, and a continuous field of topography is portrayed by contours and levels of shades. However, currently spatial data models cannot accommodate both object and field perspectives in a single model. The constraint is mainly due to the incompatibility of

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FIGURE 28.1 (See color insert following page 426.) An example of USGS topographic quadrangle maps showing both objects (roads, buildings, etc.) and fields (contours).

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the spatial conceptualizations of objects and fields that require distinct sets of data objects to portray geographic space. Spatial data models designed to represent discrete entities use points, lines, and polygons as geometric primitives to form spatial data objects that depict spatial characteristics of the entities. Such an object-view of the world describes reality as an empty space containing a combination of conceptual, primitive, and compound objects. It emphasizes individual entities and has no constraints on space being exhausted (Frank and Mark, 1991). In essence, the idea is comparable to Newtons atomic view of the world, in that, space exists regardless of whether or not there are objects to occupy the space (Couclelis, 1982). Object representation is most appropriate for geographic entities for which boundaries can be well defined, and since points, lines, and polygons do not normally exist in nature, they are practical for engineering works or administrative and property lines, such as well locations, highways and streets, states and counties, and land parcels. In contrast, the field perspective is comparable to Einsteins relative view of the world, where space is not a container populated with objects as in Newtons model, but a plenum characterized by a ubiquitous field. Since a field is spatially continuous, a representation of the field must have a value or be able to imply a value at every location. As quoted in Couclelis (1992, p. 70):
There is no such thing as empty space, i.e. space without field. Space-time does not claim existence on its own, but only as a structural quality of the field (Einstein, 1960, Relativity, p. 155).

Unlike object representation, there are no identified things in a field representation. Rather, geographic things (or features) emerge through spatial and temporal aggregation of spatial units for which raw or derived values are within a threshold in a single field or multiple fields that form the basis for image interpretation and pattern recognition. Although it is impossible to fully represent a continuous space in a digital world, several spatial data models are designed to provide various degrees of approximation. The commonly used models include regular spaced points (lattice), irregular spaced points, contours, regular cells (raster or grid), irregular triangular networks (TIN), and polygons (Goodchild, 1997a,b). Regular or irregular points are most popular for field surveys and weather observatory networks. Contours apply a set of isolines to show the spatial pattern of a geographic variable, such as elevation, temperature, or chemical concentration. Contours are very effective representation for visualization, but they are ineffective for digital computation compared to other field-based models. Point- or line-based models cannot represent a field completely because values of the focused geographic variable are only available at the locations of points or lines. In order to create a continuous surface that covers the entire field, spatial interpolation is necessary to transform point- or line-based models to area-based models, that is grid, TIN, or polygons (Bourrough and McDonnell, 1998). There are many spatial-interpolation methods, and each of them has different assumptions on spatial distributions. Lam (1983) provides an excellent discussion on commonly used spatial-interpolation methods. Area-based field representations divide a space into a fi nite number of smaller areas. While area-based models are complete field representations, the value within