INFS4205/7205 Semester 1, 2022
Project Plan (10%)
Due: 16:00 on 14 April 2022
Weighting: 10%

All assignments should be submitted to the UQ Blackboard. If any assignment fails to be submitted
appropriately before the due date, late penalties are to be applied as detailed in the ECP. It is your own
responsibility to ensure your submission is successful on time. Email submission will not be accepted.
Overview
The course project consists of two assignments, which are Project Plan and Project Implementation. In
this assignment, you are asked to only submit the project plan, which gives an explicit outline of the
workflow for implementing the example query scenarios, designs corresponding SQL-like queries, and
proposes indexing structures to be applied. Based on this plan, further implementation will be conducted
in the second stage of this project - Project Implementation.
This assignment is designed to assess your ability to apply advanced techniques for spatio-temporal
data manipulation to solve real-world problems. This is an individual assignment. The completion of
the assignment should be based on your own design.
Project Background
In this project, you are required to leverage spatial indexing methods to organise large scale spatio-
temporal data to facilitate efficient query processing in the context of COVID-19 exposure sites
management. The data include individual historical check-in trajectories (a sequence of points),
exposure sites (points), area of interest (polygon) and other types of objects.
Data format in general:
Point: p = [id, latitude, longitude, (timestamp)] // timestamp is optional
Polygon: a = [id, p0, p1, p2, …, pn]
Trajectory: r = [id, p0, p1, p2, …, pm]
The task of this project is to solve different realistic queries against these data, for helping the Public
Health researchers to retrieve required data efficiently and effectively. For example, when a new
exposure site is determined, it needs to quickly identify the people who might have visited the site
within a predefined time window via their historical trajectories. The complete set of assessed queries
for your final implementation will be released in the specification of Project Implementation. The
queries provided below are examples to give you a general sense of possible queries to be assessed. The
algorithm you design in this plan should not be limited to the following examples.
Example queries:
1. Find the K nearest sites (Point) of a given location (Point)
2. Find all exposure sites (Point) in a given area (Polygon) and within a certain time window
3. Given an exposure site (Point), find people (Trajectory) who have been there in a certain time
window.
4. Given an exposure site (Point), find people (Trajectory) who have been within a predefined
radius of the area for a certain time window.
5. Given the Trajectory of a person who is tested positive, find all suburbs (Polygon) the person
has passed through, within a certain time window.
INFS4205/7205 Semester 1, 2022
Proposal Requirements
The proposal consists of 10 marks in total. 8 marks could be earned by describing clearly and
comprehensively the following aspects with a consideration of efficiency and effectiveness of query
processing.
Algorithm Description (3 marks): You are expected to have had a good understanding of the indexing
structures learnt from the course (or beyond). When choosing one or more indexing structures to solve
the potential query scenarios, a technically sound rationale is required to be provided in this plan. For
example, the advantages or limitations of applying an indexing structure. In-depth analysis of the
algorithms are expected.
Algorithm Application (3 marks): After the rationale and analysis of the selected indexing structures,
detailed procedures to implement each example query are required to be presented. Use workflow and
SQL-like queries to help describe the proposed procedures. Pseudocode is encouraged to be used to
describe the core part of your future implementation. You need to consider the case of handling million
level data points.
Application Extension (2 marks): You are encouraged to design advanced query scenarios along with
potential solving procedures beyond the example queries.
The final 2 marks will be given to the presentation of the proposal. We expect the proposal to have
good structure, which helps comprehension. The presentation should be neat and professional, including
a correctly formatted bibliography using APA referencing style. Marks will be deducted for formatting
and presentation issues.
Format:
Prepare a PDF file containing your plan in single column, single-spaced format using a font size of 11
points, having a normal margin. The submission should be up to 4 pages, excluding references.
Submission:
The proposal should be submitted
● in PDF format, other formats are not acceptable, and
● through the “Proposal submission” Turnitin link provided at Blackboard → Assessment →
Project → Proposal submission before the deadline.
Only your submitted version will be marked. A penalty will be applied to the late submission according
to the ECP.

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