With the development of wireless communications and mobile computing technologies, the applications of moving objects have been developed in many topics, for example, traffic monitoring, mobile E-Commerce, Navigation System, and Geographic Information System. The feature of the moving objects is that objects change their locations continuously. Conventional spatial databases can not support to store the moving objects efficiently, because the databases must be updated frequently. Therefore, it is important to index moving objects for efficiently answering queries about moving objects. Among the spatial indexing methods for predicting current and future data, the approach of parametric spatial access methods has been applied largely, since it needs little memory space to preserve parametric rectangles, and it still provides good performance, so it is adopted generally. The methods of this approach include the TPR-tree, the TPR*-tree, the Bx-tree, and the Bxr-tree. Among those methods, the Bxr-tree improves CPU performance of TPR-tree by expanding query region first, and improves I/O performance of the Bxr-tree by expanding the data blocks additionally. However, the query process of the B$^x_r$-tree is too rough such that it costs too much CPU and I/O time to check the useless data. Therefore, in this thesis, we propose a new data structure and a new query processing method named Adjustable Expanded Index (AEI), to improve the disadvantages of the Bxr-tree. In our method, we let each block records the maximum and minimum speeds of each of eight directions, instead of only the maximum speed of each of four directions in the Bxr-tree method. Based on the data structure, the query region can be expanded in each of eight directions individually, instead of being expanded in each of four directions once in the Bxr-tree method. Moreover, in our AEI method, the data blocks can be expanded according to the direction toward the query region, instead of being expanded in four directions in the Bxr-tree method. In this way, the query process of AEI checks less number of data blocks because it considers the minimum speed of each of eight directions. Furthermore, the objects are divided into four groups in AEI according to their directions, while the Bxr-tree method does not. Only the objects moving to query region will be checked in the query process of AEI. Therefore, we can reduce more number of retrieved data blocks and the number of I/O operations in our method than the Bxr-tree. From our simulation, we show that the query process of the AEI method is more efficient than that of the Bxr-tree in term of the average numbers of retrieved data blocks and I/O operations.

La croissance rapide et la complexité de nombreuses villes contemporaines offrent de nombreux défis de recherche pour les scientifiques à la recherche d'une meilleure compréhension des mobilités qui se produisent dans l'espace et dans le temps. A l’heure où de très grandes séries de données de trajectoires en milieu urbain sont disponibles grâce à profusion de nombreux capteurs de positionnement et de services de nombreuses et nouvelles opportunités de recherche et d’application nous sont offertes. Cependant, une bonne intégration de ces données de mobilité nécessite encore l'élaboration de cadres méthodologiques et conceptuels tout comme la mise en oeuvre de bases de données spatio-temporelles qui offriront les capacités appropriées de représentation et de manipulation des données. La recherche développée dans cette thèse introduit une modélisation conceptuelle et une approche de gestion de base de données spatio-temporelles pour représenter et analyser des trajectoires humaines dans des espaces urbains. Le modèle considère les dimensions spatiales, temporelles et sémantiques afin de tenir compte de l’ensemble des propriétés issues des informations de mobilité. Plusieurs abstractions de données de mobilité et des outils de manipulation de données sont développés et expérimentés à partir d’une large base de données de trajectoires disponibles dans la ville de Pékin. L'intérêt de l'approche est double: il montre d’une part que de larges ensembles de données de mobilité peuvent être intégrés au sein de SGBD spatiotemporels extensibles; d’autre part des outils de manipulation et d’interrogation spécifiques peuvent être dérivés à partir de fonctions intégrées au sein d’un langage d’interrogation. Le potentiel de l’approche est illustré par une série d’interrogations qui montrent comment à partir d’une large base de données de trajectoires quelques patrons de déplacements peuvent être obtenus. / Massive trajectory datasets generated in modern cities generate not only novel research opportunities but also important methodological challenges for academics and decision-makers searching for a better understanding of travel patterns in space and time. This PhD research is oriented towards the conceptual and GIS-based modeling of human displacements derived from large sets of urban trajectories. The motivation behind this study originates from the necessity to search for and explore travel patterns that emerge from citizens acting in the city. Our research introduces a conceptual modelling framework whose objective is to integrate and analyze human displacements within a GIS-based practical solution. The framework combines conceptual and logical models that represent travel trajectories of citizens moving in a given city. The whole approach has been implemented in a geographical database system, experimented in the context of transportation data, and enriched by a series of query interface manipulations and specific functions that illustrate the potential of our whole framework for urban studies. The whole framework has been experimented on top of the Geolife project and large trajectories datasets available in the city of Beijing. Overall, the findings are twofold: first, it appears that our modelling framework can appropriately act as an extensible geographical database support for the integration of large trajectory datasets; second the approach shows that several emerging human displacements can be explored from the manipulation of large urban trajectories.