The Importance of Geometric Modeling in Linear Feature Generalization

This paper highlights the importance of modeling the geometry of linear features in order to generalize them and addresses research issues that relate to this problem. Three on-going research projects and the results obtained so far are presented. The research projects focus on, respectively, a piece-wise algebraic representation and associated transformation, a frequential representation and its use, and a hierarchical segmentation and characterization of linear features. These three complementary approaches aim to allow new generalization tools to be devised and the choice of tools for a given feature to be automated. These tools are simplification and smoothing tools, the prominent characteristic of which consists in respecting local and global shapes, and exaggeration and caricaturization tools.