Algorithms for Characterization and Trend Detection in Spatial Databases

The number and the size of spatial databases, e.g. for geomarketing, traffic control or environmental studies, are rapidly growing which results in an increasing need for spatial data mining. In this paper, we present new algorithms for spatial characterization and spatial trend analysis. For spatial characterization it is important that class membership of a database object is not only determined by its non-spatial attributes but also by the attributes of objects in its neighborhood. In spatial trend analysis, patterns of change of some non-spatial attributes in the neighborhood of a database object are determined. We present several algorithms for these tasks. These algorithms were implemented within a general framework for spatial data mining providing a small set of database primitives on top of a commercial spatial database management system. A performance evaluation using a real geographic database demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms. Furthermore, we show how the algorithms can be combined to discover even more interesting spatial knowledge.