Spatial database management has become an important subareaof current database research. Research in this area is oftencharacterized by interdisciplinary cooperation: computerscientists work with geographers andenvironmentalscientists to provide better access to spatial databases ofsteadily increasing size. After the First Symposium on LargeSpatial Databases (SSD '89) was held in Santa Barbara,California, in 1989 (and its proceedings published as Volume409 of this series), a second symposium (SSD'91) was held inZurich, Switzerland. This proceedings volume contains thepapers presented at SSD '91. Topics include spatial datamodels and access methods, performance studies, geometricalgorithms, spatial query languages and user interfaces,geographic information systems, and object-orientedtechniques.
