The SP‐displacement measure for assessing line simplification

Abstract

In line simplification the overlay of the original and the derived line produces a certain number of polygons. The area of these polygons is related to the areal distortion between the original and the derived line caused by simplification. A new cartometric measure of displacement associated with each polygon (sp‐displacement) is introduced and tested, expressing the displacements caused by line simplification. Data consisting of ten coastlines are processed under successive simplification tasks over a wide range of tolerances by applying the Douglas and Peucker algorithm. All derived lines were overlaid with the original ones by applying a typical GIS function of union. The new measure is compared with other measures suggested in the literature.