storage. Both requirement pose some 
difficult problems yet to be answered by 
technological breakthroughs. The main 
issues of concern during this phase of our 
working activities are: 
i. What real-time data compressing 
and decompression techniques are 
most suitable? 
suitable database 
programming languages for 
communicating user accesses 
between application and stored data 
? 
i Are there 
iii. What spatial indexing methods can 
meet the high speed access selective 
access of data? 
iv. What enhanced available 
technologies are there for large 
capacity data storage, beyond 
Optical Disk Storage, Digital Audio 
Tapes, Disk and Tape Vaults and 
RAID technology? 
v. Is data stripping a satisfactory 
solution to high speed data input 
and output to high speed processing 
systems for spatial data or is the 
counterpart of large partitioned data 
units a rather satisfactory solution? 
vi Given the size of data typically 
retained, it is not feasible to conceive 
of backup and recovery strategies 
typical of traditional; transactional 
systems. Are there feasible strategies 
to backup and recovery other than 
replications ? 
vii. Spatial data have been acquired and 
continue to be acquired and stored in 
a number of different formats. What 
common protocols can emerge as 
standards for interoperability in such 
heterogeneous databases and 
directory services? 
524 
The final phase of the working group's 
activities will be focused on technology 
for high speed processing in Spatial 
Information Systems. Some of the major 
issues to be addressed will include: 
i Computing Environment for High 
Speed Processing of Spatial Data. 
ii Parallel processing strategies and 
Models of Computation. 
iii. Technologies that address I/O 
bottlenecks. 
iv. Real-time processing of spatial 
information. 
v. Accessing and processing techniques 
for temporal data. 
vi. Constraints involved in the modeling 
of geophysical phenomenon and 
processes. 
Most of these issues require high 
computer intensive resources and more so 
in the area of preventing the processing 
action from data starvation due to I/O 
bottlenecks. We will examine solutions 
that coordinate the computational 
algorithms with the input output 
operations to achieve very high through 
puts. However, these issues pose 
challenging algorithmic problems. 
Working Group II/3 News 
The group will continue to cooperate with 
personnel from the industry, government 
institutions and academic research 
institutions to study and report on 
interesting findings. In particular, efforts 
will be made by members of the Working 
Group to participate in conferences and 
workshops where discussions focus on 
such technologies. The working group 
will meet at least once a year to discuss 
and report on individual activities during 
the year. 
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1994. 
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WG II/4 - ' 
Radar Dat. 
by Chairm: 
Co-Chairm 
Secretary: 
WG Memb