ISPRS, Vol.34, Part 2W2, “Dynamic and Multi-Dimensionai GIS", Bangkok, May 23-25, 2001 
AN COMPOSITE TEMPORAL DATA MODEL IN CADASTRAL INFORMATION SYSTEM 
Changsheng XUB 1 i Qingquan Lira,and Bisheng YANGra, Yuanchun HUAra, Shiwu XUra 
l1l E_mail:xuechangsheng@telekbird.com.cn, tel:0571 -7223105(o);fax:0571 -7223095 
|2| E_mail:lqq@wtusm. edu.cn 
131 E_mail:BSYang@263.net 
141 E_mail:Y.C. Hua@163.net 
• 5) E_mail:Xushiwu@cug.edu.cn 
i 1 ! w Institute of Land Surveying & Planning of Zhejiang Province ,40 Qingyue Street,Hangzhou 310003, P.R.China 
mpjpjwuhan University, 139 Luoyu Road, Wuhan 430079, P.R.China 
151 Chinese Geology university, 31 Lumo Road, Wuhan 430074, P.R.China 
KEYWORDS: temporal data model, CIS. 
ABSTRACT 
With the rapid development of land transactions, land disputes become more and more frequent. Not only the current information of land 
is cared about, but also its historical records become more and more important in cadastral management. A composite temporal data 
model is proposed. The authors describe its data structure and the course of the implementation in detail.The composite temporal data 
model, which has little redundant storage, quick historical retrieval and security of storing data, can meet the basic need of temporal 
GIS. 
1. INTRODUCTION 
Cadastral Information System (CIS) is a branch of Land 
Information System (LIS), which is one of GIS applications in 
land management. CIS is Office Automation of cadastral 
management. In general, cadastral management includes land 
registration, land investigation, land classification and valuation, 
land statistics and cadastral archive management. Aparcel is the 
smallest spatial unit of cadastral management, which is a 
contiguous area, of land within unique, homogeneous property 
interests. It seemed that people’s interest and attention to the 
parcel mainly focused on the aspect of spatial information (for 
example the boundary of a parcel) and attribute information (for 
instance, ownership or usership) , not sufficiently on time factor 
(such as, the beginning and ceasing time of a parcel). With the 
rapid development of land transactions, land disputes become 
more and more frequent. People need more detailed historical 
records of parcel changes (such as, many times it has 
changed and why it was sold or changed) and regard them as 
legal basis in many land disputes. In other words, not only the 
current information of land is cared about, but also its historical 
records become more and more important in cadastral 
management. At present, how to efficiently store and manage 
historical data has become a factual criterion of evaluating a 
CIS. 
2. REVIEW OF TEMPORAL DATA MODEL 
Many scholars have advanced a lot of temporal data models. 
Techniques used in current temporal GIS data models include 
the snapshot model (Armstrong, 1988), the differential object 
model (langran and Chriman, 1988), time-based data model 
(worboys, 1992; Shi and Zhang, 1995). The snapshot approach 
has disadvantages of redundant storage of unchanged data, 
difficult extraction of local detailed changes, inexplicit temporal 
information and operation inefficiency (Peuquet and Duan, 1995). 
The differential object model has difficulty in preserving object 
persistency because this model requires constant updating 
object identities upon continual changes in spatial units and 
configurations (May Lun, 1997). Time-based data model, which 
uses time indexes and event indexes to access previous 
information, is complex in data structure. Existing temporal GIS 
models are incapable of describing all kinds of spatial changes. 
3. THE COMPOSITE TEMPORAL DATA MODEL 
3.1 THE DATA STRUCTURE 
To overcome the shortages of the above models, a composite 
temporal data model is proposed. Theoretically, time axis 
extends from the past to the future infinitely, correspondingly