Creating Moving Regions from Satellite Scan Data

Moving objects databases are specialized on storing and processing objects with spatial attributes that change over time. An important class of objects are moving regions that can change shape and position over time. Currently, the prevailing method for constructing moving regions is to interpolate them from snapshots. In this paper, an alternative method is proposed, that is better suitable for certain kinds of data as, for example, satellite scans of the earth surface. For instance, the NASA provides datasets with active fire data in near real-time from the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) sensor, attached to satellites as the Suomi NPP and NOAA-20. These satellites orbit earth about 14 times a day and provide full global coverage twice a day. Using these satellites, datasets are compiled that provide locations of active fires on earth as lists of positions and timestamps. This paper describes an alternative, better suitable method for creating moving regions from these lists, which can then be imported into and processed by moving objects databases.