Event-centered data model

Data produced in Geovistory is stored according to an event-centered data model, building on persistent items and events (temporal entities).

Persistent items include elements that exist over time. For example, 'persons' are a class of the type persistent item. Other examples are 'geographical places', but also more abstract classes such as 'groups'. Persistent items are described through temporal entities, which refer to them.

The classes of temporal entities include events located in time which characterize the persistent itmes. Example of temporal entities are events such as a 'birth', 'death' or a 'coronnation'. Each of them has taken place at a specific moment in time.

Data-Model applied in Geovistory

The event-centered data model allows Geovistory a very flexible treatment of uncertainties and changes over time in your data. For example, you can very easily store different "namings" of a 'Geographical Place' such as 'Istanbul' & 'Constantinople' and attribute to each naming a specific duration in time.

Note: How the event-centered data model translates into classes in Geovistory is explained here.