GIS data modeling and object-oriented geographical database: the drainage network of Turiaçu/MA Watershed

• Grant number: 25/22943-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: January 01, 2026
• End date: December 31, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Geography
• Principal Investigator: Lindon Fonseca Matias
• Grantee: Nelson Gervoni Junior
• Host Institution: Instituto de Geociências (IG). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The Turiaçu Watershed is in the region of the Legal Amazon, in the state of Maranhão. It's a watershed with 14,141 km² of territorial extension, twenty municipalities, fourteen urbanized areas, four quilombola lands, and the Indigenous Land of Alto Turiaçu, with 5,295 km² of legal delimited area (ZEE-MA, 2025). Under the parent research project, MultiGIS4Rivers, this undergraduate research project aims to develop the data modeling for an object-oriented geodatabase of the Watershed's drainage network at a 1:100,000 scale. The methodology adopted will be based on the geodatabase data model (Zeiler, 1999), since we understand it as the most advanced form of representation for the geographical space in a Geographic Information System (SIG). It is not just a vectorial representation (such as a drawing file) with geometrical/dimensional definitions and an associated database (shapefile). In this case, there are specific representations and topologies for multiple objects, such as a watershed. The project aspires to contribute to the public management tools of the researched area. (AU)