Supporting discovery-driven exploration from a land use, cover and change model

Abstract

Land Use Cover and Change models are popular tools for monitoring the environmental effects of human activity on the earth. This paper focuses on a hydrology and economic model of a catchment area as a tool to support decision making about land use. The model simulates the effects of land uses on the level of the water table and the effects of salinity on yields and profits. The model can simulate effects for years into the future. The data generated can support discovery-driven exploration of the data in the manner of Online Analytical Processing. Interactive users can view summaries across different dimensions of the data. Dimensions can include time, land use, soil type, elevation, rainfall and salinity levels. This paper also describes an approach to computing summaries based on bitmap indexing and set operations.