Spatial pattern matching: a new direction for finding spatial objects

In this paper, we study the spatial pattern matching (SPM) query. Given a set D of spatial objects (e.g., houses and shops), each with a textual description, we aim at finding all combinations of objects from D that match a user-defined spatial pattern P. A pattern P is a graph whose vertices represent spatial objects, and edges denote distance relationships between them. The SPM query returns the instances that satisfy P. An example of P can be "a house within 10-minute walk from a school, which is at least 2km away from a hospital". The SPM query can benefit users such as house buyers, urban planners, and archaeologists. We first formally formulate the SPM problem, and then propose efficient query algorithms. We also develop an online system, called SpaceKey, which is based on the SPM query, to support some real applications such as property searching. Finally, we point out a list of possible research directions for future work.