A Generic Spatial OLAP Model for Evaluating Natural Hazards in a Volunteered Geographic Information Context

Abstract

Spatial data warehouses (SDW) and spatial OLAP (SOLAP) systems are well-known business intelligence technologies that aim to support a multidimensional and online analysis for a large volume of geo-referenced datasets. SOLAP systems are already used in the context of natural hazards for analyzing sensor data and experts' measurements. Recently, new data gathering tools coined as volunteered geographic information systems (VGI) have been adopted especially by non-expert users. Hence, (spatial) application development is facing a new challenge, which is the integration of expert-oriented data with citizen-provided data. In this paper, we propose a new generic spatio-multidimensional model based on the question/answer risk evaluation model that allows the integration of VGI data with classical SDW and SOLAP systems for the online analysis of natural hazards monitored by volunteers.