STAH-TREE - Hybrid index for spatio temporal aggregation

This paper presents a new index that stores spatiotemporal data and provides efficient algorithms for processing range and time aggregation queries where results are precise values not an approximation. In addition, this technology allows to reach detailed information when they are required. Spatiotemporal data are defined as static spatial objects with non spatial attributes changing in time. Range aggregation query computes aggregation over set of spatial objects that fall into query window. Its temporal extension allows to define additional time constraints. Index name (i.e. STAH-tree) is English abbreviation and can be extended as Spatio-Temporal Aggregation Hybrid Tree. STAH-tree is based on two well known indexing techniques. R- and aR-tree for storing spatial data and MVB-tree for storing non-spatial attributes values. These techniques were extended with new functionality and adopted to work together. Cost model for node accesses was also developed.