First uniform treatment of moving objects databases, the technology that supports GPS and RFID data analysis.

We live in an age of rapid technological development. The Internet already affects our lives in many ways. Indeed, we continue to depend more, and more intrinsically, on the Internet, which is increasingly becoming a fundamental piece of societal infrastructure, just as water supply, electricity grids, and transportation networks have been for a long time. But while these other infrastructures are relatively static, the Internet is undergoing swift and fundamental change: Notably, the Internet is going mobile. The world has some 6.7 billion humans, 4 billion mobile phones, and 1.7 billion Internet users. The two most populous continents, Asia and Africa, have relatively low Internet penetration and hold the greatest potentials for growth. Their mobile phone users by far outnumber their Internet users, and the numbers are growing rapidly. China and India are each gaining about half a dozen million new phone users per month. Users across the globe as a whole increasingly embrace mobile Internet devices, with smart phone sales are starting to outnumber PC sales. Indeed, these and other facts suggest that the Internet stands to gain a substantial mobile component. This mega trend towards “mobile” is enabled by rapid and continuing advances in key technology areas such as mobile communication, consumer electronics, g- positioning, and computing. In short, this is the backdrop for this very timely book on moving objects by Xiaofeng Meng and Jidong Chen.

We are rapidly heading towards a world in which the computing infrastructure will contain billions of devices, which will interact with other computing/communications devices that are carried or worn by users as they go through their daily routines. Such devices will provide data access to mobile users as they move within buildings, cities, or across the globe. This new infrastructure presents tremendous challenges for data management technology, including: huge scale; variable and intermittent connectivity; location and context-aware applications; bandwidth, power, and devi- size limitations; and multimedia data delivery across hybrid networks and systems. Traditional data management technologies such as query processing, transaction management, workflow, business process management, and metadata management must all be reevaluated in this emerging environment. Furthermore, nontraditional issues such as the semantics of mobile data, location-dependent querying, broadcast and multicast delivery, and caching/prefetching techniques must all be addressed. The ability to track people as they move about their daily tasks raises serious issues of security and privacy. This conference is the fourth in the Mobile Data Management series, focusing on the challenges and opportunities for the management of data in mobile, pervasive, and wearable computing. MDM 2000 and 2001 were in Hong Kong and MDM 2002 was in Singapore. Eighty-seven papers were submitted to the conference from 23 countries and were subject to a rigorous review procedure. Every paper had three or four independent reviews. Twenty-one full papers and 15 short papers from both academia and industry were selected for publication in this volume of proceedings.

Natural and human activities change the environment we are living in and consequently impact the quality of life. Analysing these dynamics leads to a better understanding of urban change and facilitates urban development. Research related to the management of urban data has a long tradition. Through the years a variety of challenging research questions has been investigated related to the collection, storage, use and visualisation of the data representing the urban phenomena in a computer-based environment. The Urban Data Management Symposium (UDMS) focuses on these issues since 1971. UDMS aims at providing a forum to discuss urban planning processes, exchange ideas, share information on available technology and demonstrate and promote successful information systems in local government. The focus is on urban, regional and rural issues. The UDMS 2009 annual addresses the following themes: 3D modelling, Spatial Data Infrastructures and databases, Risk and Disaster management, Environmental planning, analysis and e-government and Traffic and road monitoring. The book will be a useful source of information for urban data-related professionals, such as scholars, GIS engineers, geomatic professionals, photogrammetrists, land surveyors, mapping specialists, urban planners and researchers, as well as for postgraduate students and lecturers.

This text integrates different mobility data handling processes, from database management to multi-dimensional analysis and mining, into a unified presentation driven by the spectrum of requirements raised by real-world applications. It presents a step-by-step methodology to understand and exploit mobility data: collecting and cleansing data, storage in Moving Object Database (MOD) engines, indexing, processing, analyzing and mining mobility data. Emerging issues, such as semantic and privacy-aware querying and mining as well as distributed data processing, are also covered. Theoretical presentation is smoothly interchanged with hands-on exercises and case studies involving an actual MOD engine. The authors are established experts who address both theoretical and practical dimensions of the field but also present valuable prototype software. The background context, clear explanations and sample exercises make this an ideal textbook for graduate students studying database management, data mining and geographic information systems.

Welcome to the Second International Conference on Mobile Data Management (MDM2001). The conference serves as a forum for the exchange of technical ideas and research results in the areas of mobility and database management. This year, we have a very exciting program for MDM2001. Many quality papers were submitted to the conference. All of the submitted papers were - viewed by at least three PC members. Due to the limitations of the program schedule as well as the desire to organize the conference using a single track format, we selected only 18 papers for full presentation at the conference. As a result many excellent papers could not be accepted. The papers chosen for presentation span a large range of topics, from n- work protocol issues up to the semantics of mobile applications. The common theme of all these papers is their recognition of the central role played by data managementtechniques in the developmentof the emerging worldof mobile and wireless applications. We have loosely organized these papers into six areas: 1. DATA MANAGEMENT ARCHITECTURES, 2. CONTENT DELIVERY, 3. DATA BROADCASTING, 4. CACHING AND HOARDING, 5. COPING WITH MOVEMENT, 6. NETWORKS AND SYSTEMS ISSUES In addition to the researchtrack, we havesought to broaden the scope of the conference with an industrial session as well as poster presentations. Overall, the program strikes a comfortable balance between applied and theoretically oriented papers.

The volume includes a set of selected papers extended and revised from the 4th International conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, March 1-2, 2011, Macau, Chin. This Volume is to provide a forum for researchers, educators, engineers, and government officials involved in the general areas of knowledge discovery and data mining and learning to disseminate their latest research results and exchange views on the future research directions of these fields. 108 high-quality papers are included in the volume.