A method for the extraction of partition lines from long and narrow patches that account for structural features. Issue 2 (18th March 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Li, Chengming; Dai, Zhaoxin; Yin, Yong; Wu, Pengda
• Is Part Of: Transactions in GIS. Volume 23:Issue 2(2019)
• Page Start: 349
• Page End: 364
• Publication Date: 2019-03-18
• Subjects: Geographic information systems -- Periodicals; 910.285
• DOI: 10.1111/tgis.12523
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1361-1682

Abstract

Abstract: The extraction of partition lines for long and narrow patches (LN patches) is an important yet difficult problem in the generalization of thematic data. When current methods are used to process polygons with irregular shapes or complex branch convergence zones, the extracted line structural features tend to be inaccurate and topologically erroneous. In this article, we propose an improved partition lines extraction algorithm of constrained Delaunay triangulation to counter these issues. The proposed method aims to maintain consistency between the extracted line structure characteristics and the actual object structure, especially for complex branch convergence zones. First, we describe three types of aggregation patterns (Type A, B, and C aggregation zones) that occur in partition line extractions for LN patches of complex branch convergence zones using Delaunay triangulation. Then, a partition line extraction algorithm that accounts for the direction between the edges of triangles and the distance of nodes in aggregation zones is proposed. Finally, we test our method for a dataset relating to Guizhou Province, China. Compared with the current method that uses quantitative indicators and visualization, the results indicate that our method not only has applicability for simple situations but also is superior for preserving structural features of complex branch convergence zones.