Selective omission of road features based on mesh density for automatic map generalization

Selection of roads is an intractable generalization operation due to the difficulty in retaining the density difference and connectivity of a road network. This paper proposes a novel approach of selective omission for roads based on mesh density. The density of a road network and its local variations are calculated using meshes as units. Since maps at different scales usually reveal different densities, different density thresholds for road networks are determined on the basis of theoretical analysis and empirical study of mesh densities on maps at different scales. The selection process starts with the identification of the meshes that have a density beyond the threshold. The mesh with the largest density is first treated. Its bounding road segments are ordered according to their relative importance. The least important segment is eliminated. The remaining segments are then merged with the adjacent mesh, thus forming a new mesh. The selection procedure is repeated until none of the meshes has a density ...