Drainage Typification Based on Dendritic Decomposition

Abstract

Map generalisation is an abstraction process that seeks to transform the representation of cartographic objects from the original version into a coarser one. The characteristics of cartographic objects and the arrangement of map features have to be observed and preserved in a generalisation process. A method is developed for typifying drainages while preserving their structural characteristics, i.e.presenting the drainages with reduced number of rivers under the constraint of preserving the original structure in terms of the type and distribution of the rivers. We apply Töpfer's radical law to calculate the amount of the rivers to be retained on the generalised map. The drainages share the amount of retained rivers in proportion to the number of their tributaries. In each of the drainages, the shared amount is divided among the rivers based on the dendritic decomposition of the drainage. We implement and test the method in Java Environment. Results from case studies show that the method effectively preserves the original structures of the drainages on the generalised maps.