Unified Indexing of Spatio-temporal Data and Authorizations

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Unified Indexing of Spatio-temporal Data and Authorizations

Vijay Atluri
Rutgers University
Friday, April 16, 2004, 11:00am - 12:00pm
LC 102, Brooklyn Campus, Polytechnic University

The advent of commercial observation satellites in the new millennium provides unprecedented access to timely information and images of the Earth with the sharpness and quality previously available only from U.S., Russian, and French military satellites. Uncontrolled dissemination of this geospatial data, coupled with the publicly available data, may pose significant threats to national security and privacy. Therefore, there is a clear need for effective and efficient schemes for facilitating controlled dissemination of geospatial data only to authorized individuals.

We present an access control model, called Geospatial Data Authorization Model (GSAM) that is capable of specifying access control policies based on the region covered by an image, as well as based on the credentials of users. Unlike conventional authorizations that can be implemented as access control lists, since authorizations on geospatial data involve spatial and temporal attributes, managing the authorization base and searching for authorizations based on the spatial extent require a spatiotemporal indexing structure. We present a novel indexing scheme, which is an extension of the R-tree that allows objects of different resolutions be indexed based on their spatial and temporal attributes, as well as allows layering of spatiotemporal authorizations on the tree itself. By employing a uniform index for both geospatial database and authorization base, access requests can be processed more efficiently as only one index structure need to be traversed.

Brief bio:
Dr. Vijay Atluri received her B.Tech. in Electronics and Communications Engineering from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Kakinada, India, M.Tech. in Electronics and Communications Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India, and Ph. D. in Information Technology from George Mason University, USA. She is currently an Associate Professor of Computer Information Systems in the MSIS Department, and research director for the Center for Information Management, Integration and Connectivity (CIMIC) at Rutgers University.

For further information or to meet with the speaker please contact Nasir Memon [memon@poly.edu].