Modélisation des systèmes d'information à référence spatiale et de leurs domaines d'utilisation spécialisés

The field of spatially referenced information systems (SRIS) is currently in full expansion. The principal reasons are undoubtedly the increasingly acute problems encountered by man to manage his environment and the growing availability of high-performance information systems. Territorial managers – engineers, planners, geographers, etc. – are among the main people interested in the availability of abundant, reliable information sources concerning territory. Methods and tools permitting the best use of these information sources according to their needs are also necessary. The goal of this thesis is to define a methodological, organizational and technological framework which allows territorial managers to integrate SRIS for their respective applications in an efficient and coherent manner. Three themes make up the core of the study: modeling of treatments applied to localized data in the specialized fields of SRIS utilization; modeling of localized data in the specialized fields of SRIS utilization; definition of an organizational context of systems which process information relative to a given territory. The solutions brought to these three themes all refer to elements of modeling theory, which is the subject of a preliminary chapter. The principal results of this thesis are the following: A model of decision making system is proposed, relevant for the description of systems with the goal of producing decisions. A classification of treatments applied to localized data is proposed, which calls upon new notions such as: spatial references, within which the measure of the location of spatially referenced objects is of homogeneous nature and quality; spatial models; topology, for which the traditional perception in the SRIS field is re-examined. A few semantic enrichments are brought to the formalisms used to describe the structure of spatially referenced data. An organizational model of systems which manage and process information relative to a given territory is proposed. This model is based on a federated organization of SRIS established by partners involved in territorial management. The relevance of the proposed theoretical framework is finally demonstrated for a few fields specialized in SRIS utilization: urban engineering, particularly urban drainage, which served as the guiding thread for this study; land planning and improvements; road maintenance management; geographic statistical analysis; cartography.