DEVELOPMENT OF AN EVENT-BASED SYSTEM OBJECT (EBSO) DATA MODEL FOR INTEGRATION OF ENVIRONMENTAL DATA

摘要

Environmental problems are complex systemic problems, which can only be solved effectively with systems thinking. This means that, in the process of problem solving, information of the involving human-natural system's structure, attributes, behaviors, relations and their dynamic changes are required for systematical analysis and, solving. The current data models, such as relational data model, object-oriented data model, object-relational data model and object-event data model, can be used to organize certain data and are generally used by enterprise database system. However, they are not efficient and effective enough for collecting and integrating environmental data to generate the information mentioned above. In this study, a conceptual data model based on object-oriented thinking and systems thinking has been developed, which is more able to systematically collect and integrate environmental data. In this way, the data abstracting a system's discrete structure, attributes, behaviors, relations and also its dynamic events can be systematically organized by the event-based system object data model. Even the data distributed in different databases can be cooperatively generated and maintained by their corresponding organizations and effectively integrated and used for solving of environmental problems.