Implementation and evaluation of a hypercube-based method for spatio- temporal exploration and analysis

1) Abstract In this article we test and evaluate the implementation of a dimension of spatio-temporal topological operators within a hypercube, a multidimensional database (MDDB) structure formed by the conjunction of several dimensions. Our goal is to permit adequate Spatio-Temporal Exploration and Analysis (STEA) in the context of Automatic Position Reporting System (APRS), the amateur radio system for position report transmission. Mobile APRS stations are equipped with GPS navigation systems to provide real-time positioning reports. The multidimensional approach has already demonstrated a good potential for spatio-temporal exploration and analysis despite its lack of explicit spatial, temporal and spatio-temporal topological operators that are of key importance for spatio-temporal knowledge discovery. Our approach implements spatio-temporal topological operators in multidimensional databases (MDDBs) through a hierarchy of topological operators representing spatial and temporal relationships between instances of objects, this hierarchy covers the three possible domains of spatio-temporal topological constrains e.g. spatial, temporal and spatio-temporal. At the root of the hierarchy users can make use of simple operators such as " same place " , " same time " or " same time, same place " in their multidimensional query. As they