Landmark‐based summarized messages for flood warning. Issue 5 (20th October 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Chang, Ya‐Hui; Liu, Yu‐Te; Tan, Yi‐Yuan
• Is Part Of: Transactions in GIS. Volume 21:Issue 5(2017)
• Page Start: 847
• Page End: 861
• Publication Date: 2016-10-20
• Subjects: data summarization -- flood warnings -- landmarks -- R‐trees -- Voronoi cells; Geographic information systems -- Periodicals; 910.285
• DOI: 10.1111/tgis.12241
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1361-1682

Abstract

Abstract: In order to evacuate residents in time, flood warning systems must have rapid data processing algorithms to translate detailed numerical data into simple warnings and navigation aids. Although it is common to display warning messages by directly drawing red circles on a map embedded in a Web page to indicate the regions about to be inundated, such an approach has some drawbacks. We propose an alternative way by summarizing the warning messages based on landmarks, so that the messages can be short and convey even more information. We have designed two approaches to output such messages. They are the nearest landmark approach and the threshold approach, which differ in the way of determining which landmarks will be influenced by a certain flooded region. These two methods are implemented and we compare their performance through real and synthetic datasets. Experimental results show that the threshold approach usually takes less execution time than the nearest landmark approach. Its severity ranking of landmarks is also better suited to human behaviour.