Nearest and reverse nearest neighbor queries for moving objects

Proceedings International Database Engineering and Applications Symposium, 2002

With the proliferation of wireless communications and the rapid advances in technologies for tracking the positions of continuously moving objects, algorithms for efficiently answering queries about large numbers of moving objects increasingly are needed. One such query is the reverse nearest neighbor (RNN) query that returns the objects that have a query object as their closest object. While algorithms have been proposed that compute RNN queries for non-moving objects, there have been no proposals for answering RNN queries for continuously moving objects. Another such query is the nearest neighbor (NN) query, which has been studied extensively and in many contexts. Like the RNN query, the NN query has not been explored for moving query and data points. This paper proposes an algorithm for answering RNN queries for continuously moving points in the plane. As a part of the solution to this problem and as a separate contribution, an algorithm for answering NN queries for continuously moving points is also proposed. The results of performance experiments are reported.

GeoInformatica, 2003

A desirable feature in spatio-temporal databases is the ability to answer future queries, based on the current data characteristics (reference position and velocity vector). Given a moving query and a set of moving objects, a future query asks for the set of objects that satisfy the query in a given time interval. The difficulty in such a case is that both the query and the data objects change positions continuously, and therefore we can not rely on a given fixed reference position to determine the answer. Existing techniques are either ...

GeoInformatica, 2007

Nearest Neighbor (NN) search has been in the core of spatial and spatiotemporal database research during the last decade. The literature on NN query processing algorithms so far deals with either stationary or moving query points over static datasets or future (predicted) locations over a set of continuously moving points. With the increasing number of Mobile Location Services (MLS), the need for effective k-NN query processing over historical trajectory data has become the vehicle for data analysis, thus improving existing or even proposing new services.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2005

Nearest Neighbor (NN) search has been in the core of spatial and spatiotemporal database research during the last decade. The literature on NN query processing algorithms so far deals with either stationary or moving query points over static datasets or future (predicted) locations over a set of continuously moving points. With the increasing number of Mobile Location Services (MLS), the need for effective k-NN query processing over historical trajectory data has become the vehicle for data analysis, thus improving existing or even proposing new services.

ICPS '05. Proceedings. International Conference on Pervasive Services, 2005., 2005

In databases of moving objects it is important to answer queries that concern the future positions of the objects. An important query type in such an environment is the nearest-neighbor query, which asks for the k closest objects of a query object during a time interval [t s , t e ]. However, there are cases where the (k+1)-th nearest-neighbor is requested after the execution of the k-NN query. In such a case, either the query must be evaluated again, or we can exploit the previous result and use an incremental method to determine the new answer. We focus on the second alternative and present efficient incremental algorithms that outperform the trivial method which is based on complete re-execution of the query. In addition, we study the problem of keeping the query result consistent in the presence of object insertions, deletions and updates which are very common in a dynamic moving-object environment.

Distributed and Parallel Databases, 2005

We consider the problem of indexing a set of objects moving in d-dimensional spaces along linear trajectories. A simple external-memory indexing scheme is proposed to efficiently answer general range queries. The following are examples of the queries that can be answered by the proposed method: report all moving objects that will (i) pass between two given points within a specified time interval; (ii) become within a given distance from some or all of a given set of other moving objects. Our scheme is based on mapping the objects to a dual space, where queries about moving objects are transformed into polyhedral queries concerning their speeds and initial locations. We then present a simple method for answering such polyhedral queries, based on partitioning the space into disjoint regions and using a B+-tree to index the points in each region. By appropriately selecting the boundaries of each region, we guarantee an average search time that matches a known lower bound for the problem. Specifically, for a fixed d, if the coordinates of a given set of N points are statistically independent, the proposed technique answers polyhedral queries, on the average, in

Proceedings of the twenty-first ACM SIGMOD-SIGACT-SIGART symposium on Principles of database systems - PODS '02, 2002

Database applications for moving objects pose new challenges in modeling, querying, and maintenance of objects whose locations are rapidly changing over time. Previous work on modeling and querying spatio-temporal databases and constraint databases focus primarily on snapshots of changing databases. In this paper we study query evaluation techniques for moving object databases where moving objects are being updated frequently. We consider a constraint database approach to moving objects and queries. We classify moving object queries into: "past", "continuing", and "future" queries. We argue that while traditional constraint query evaluation techniques are suitable for past queries, new techniques are needed for continuing and future queries. Motivated by nearest-neighbor queries, we define a query language based on a single "generalized distance" function f mapping from objects to continuous functions from time to R. Queries in this language may be past, continuing, or future. We show that if f maps to polynomials, queries can be evaluated efficiently using the plane sweeping technique from computational geometry. Consequently, many known distance based queries can be evaluated efficiently.

Proceedings of the 6th international conference on Mobile data management, 2005

Although significant effort has been put into the development of efficient spatio-temporal indexing techniques for moving objects, little attention has been given to the development of techniques that efficiently support queries about the past, present, and future positions of objects. The provisioning of such techniques is challenging, both because of the nature of the data, which reflects continuous movement, and because of the types of queries to be supported. This paper proposes the BB x-index structure, which indexes the positions of moving objects, given as linear functions of time, at any time. The index stores linearized moving-object locations in a forest of B +-trees. The index supports queries that select objects based on temporal and spatial constraints, such as queries that retrieve all objects whose positions fall within a spatial range during a set of time intervals. Empirical experiments are reported that offer insight into the query and update performance of the proposed technique.

GeoInformatica, 2013

This paper addresses the problem of continuous aggregate nearest-neighbor (CANN) queries for moving objects in spatio-temporal data stream management systems. A CANN query specifies a set of landmarks, an integer k, and an aggregate distance function f (e.g., min, max, or sum), where f computes the aggregate distance between a moving object and each of the landmarks. The answer to this continuous query is the set of k moving objects that have the smallest aggregate distance f . A CANN query may also be viewed as a combined set of nearest neighbor queries. We introduce several algorithms to continuously and incrementally answer CANN queries. Extensive experimentation shows that the proposed operators outperform the state-ofthe-art algorithms by up to a factor of 3 and incur low memory overhead.

Proceedings 18th International Conference on Data Engineering, 2002

Visionaries predict that the Internet will soon extend to billions of wireless devices, or objects, a substantial fraction of which will offer their changing positions to locationbased services. This paper assumes an Internet-service scenario where objects that have not reported their position within a specified duration of time are expected to no longer be interested in, or of interest to, the service. Due to the possibility of many "expiring" objects, a highly dynamic database results. The paper presents an R-tree based technique for the indexing of the current positions of such objects. Different types of bounding regions are studied, and new algorithms are provided for maintaining the tree structure. Performance experiments indicate that, when compared to the approach where the objects are not assumed to expire, the new indexing technique can improve search performance by a factor of two or more without sacrificing update performance.