A Smalltalk-based extension to traditional Geographic Information Systems

The Dynamic Environmental Effects Model{copyright} (DEEM), under development at Argonne National Laboratory, is a fully object-based modeling software system that supports distributed, dynamic representation of the interlinked processes and behavior of the earth`s surface and near-surface environment, at variable scales of resolution and aggregation. Many of these real world objects are not stored in a format conducive to efficient GIS usage. Their dynamic nature, complexity and number of possible DEEM entity classes precluded efficient integration with traditional GIS technologies due to the loosely coupled nature of their data representations. To address these shortcomings, an intelligent object-oriented GIS engine (OOGIS) was developed. This engine provides not only a spatially optimized object representation, but also direct linkages to the underlying object, its data and behaviors