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ON-LINE INTEGRATION OF PHOTOGRAMMETRIC SYSTEMS AND SPATIAL 
DATABASES FOR PRODUCING STRUCTURED AND CONSISTENT DATA FOR GIS 
S. Hosseinian, H. Ebadi, F. Famood 
Geomatics Engineering Faculty, K.N.Toosi University of Technology, Tehran, Iran - saharhoseinian@yahoo.com, 
Iran-(ebadi)@kntu.ac.ir, Iran - farshid_famood@yahoo.com 
Commission IV, WG IV/3 
KEY WORDS: Integration, DBMS, Photogrammetric Systems, On-Line, Validation 
ABSTRACT: 
Photogrammetric systems are important sources for GIS databases. Currently, the trend towards the integration of photogrammetric 
systems and spatial databases is increased significantly. Integration of photogrammetric systems and spatial databases has great 
benefits in which some of them are mentioned here. This integration makes it possible to use information stored in spatial databases 
in the process of automatic or semi-automatic data acquisition and updating. It reduces time and costs of producing and maintaining 
high quality and up to date information in spatial databases. Also, if on-line data structuring and quality control tools are provided 
and applied in these systems, the quality of data will be increased significantly. Quality and consistency of data is very important 
due to the fact that it affects reliability of the results of GIS analysis. For avoiding occurrence of inconsistencies and errors and 
maintaining the quality of database, on-line data structuring and consistency control must be considered. In this research for 
achieving mentioned purposes, on-line integration of photogrammetric and spatial database management systems for producing fully 
structured and consistent data has been investigated. In this way, a rule-based integrated system was developed for on-line and 
automatic data structuring and applying consistency constraints using object oriented methodology. Results of practical test of this 
system have shown that the produced and saved data in spatial databases, by means of this system, is consistent and structured 
efficiently. It shows high flexibility in solving different problems. In addition, time and costs of producing spatially structured and 
consistent data for GIS applications is significantly reduced. 
1. INTRODUCTION 
Photogrammetric systems are valuable and important data 
sources for GISs. They collect reliable 2D/3D geoinformation 
for GIS databases. The trend toward the integration of 
photogrammetric systems and GIS databases is increased 
significantly and various integrated systems in different levels 
of integration have been introduced to the market. Integration of 
photogrammetric systems and GIS databases has great benefits 
which some of them are mentioned here. This integration makes 
it possible to use information from GIS databases in the process 
of automatic or semi-automatic data acquisition and updating. It 
reduces time and costs of producing and maintaining high 
quality and up-to-date information in spatial databases. Also by 
using these systems, map generation in different scales would 
be possible. If active validating and on-line data structuring 
tools are provided and applied in these systems, the quality of 
geoinformaion will be increased significantly and the gains of 
efficiency become considerably greater. Quality and 
consistency of data are very important, because they effect on 
the reliability of the results of GIS analysis. However, a few of 
the existing integrated systems have tools for on-line and 
automatic 3D data structuring and quality controlling. Therefore, 
in this research this issue is considered, for this purpose, in the 
developed integrated system topological relationships have 
been used for detecting and correcting structural and 
topological errors. For designing mentioned system, objects and 
constraints were modeled according to the system requirements. 
In this system, data is structured and consistency of the 
produced data is controlled with respect to the stored 
information in the spatial database. This process is carried out 
simultaneously with data acquisition process and digitizing 
features from 3D photogrammetric model. Error detecting 
process is carried out and the correction process would be 
performed at the same time if it is needed. After these processes, 
the produced 3D spatial data will be directly stored in the 
database. Errors must not be allowed to be entered into the 
database. For detecting and correcting errors and controlling the 
consistency and quality of spatial data, consistency constraints 
are used. Integrity constraints have been classified to 
topological, semantic and user-defined constraints. Since many 
of integrity constraints such as semantic constraints are 
application-dependent, it is necessary to create new constraints 
or change the existing constraints with respect to the application 
and then store them in the repository again. So in the mentioned 
system, stored rules can be changed or even new rules can be 
created by an expert user. After specifying the rules, they are 
stored in the database. These stored rules can be used by any 
user for different problems but only expert users can change or 
create new rules. This makes it possible to use knowledge of 
experts that is stored in the database in the form of rules even 
by a user without this knowledge. 
This developed system can be applied in the process of data 
updating, too. In this paper, the design and implementation of 
the developed integrated system for acquisition and 
maintenance of reliable 3D spatial data is explained. For this 
purpose, Section 2 evaluates integration of photogrammetric 
systems and spatial database management systems at first. In 
the section 3 development of the direct integrated system with 
active validation is explained and in the last section conclusion 
and some recommendations are presented.