Design and development of a system for vario-scale maps

Nowadays, there are many geo-information data sources available such as maps on the Internet, in-car navigation devices and mobile apps. All datasets used in these applications are the same in principle, and face the same issues, namely:\ud\ud• Maps of different scales are stored separately. With many separate fixed levels, a lot of information is the same, but still needs to be included, which leads to duplication.\ud• With many redundant data throughout the scales, features are represented again and again, which may lead to inconsistency.\ud• Currently available maps contain significantly more levels of detail (twenty map scales on average) than in the past. These levels must be created, but the optimal strategy to do so is not known.\ud• For every user’s data request, a significant part of the data remains the same, but still needs to be included. This leads to more data transfer, and slower response.\ud• The interactive Internet environment is not used to its full potential for user navigation. It is common to observe lagging, popping features or flickering of a newly retrieved map scale feature while using the map.\ud\udThis research develops principles of variable scale (vario-scale) maps to address these issues. The vario-scale approach is an alternative for obtaining and maintaining geographical data sets at different map scales. It is based on the specific topological structure called tGAP (topological Generalized Area Partitioning) which addresses the main open issues of current solutions for managing spatial data sets of different scales such as: redundancy data, inconsistency of map scales and dynamic transfer. The objective of this thesis is to design, to develop and to extend the variable-scale data structures and it is expressed as the following research question: How to design and develop a system for vario-scale maps? To address the above research question, this research has been conducted using the following outline: 1) Investigate state-of-the-art in map generalization. 2) Study development of vario-scale structure done so far. 3) Propose techniques for generating b