Digital Vector Maps Research Articles

STUDY OF TEMPORAL CHANGES IN THE TOPOGRAPHIC INFORMATION OF 1:50,000 SCALE MAPS FOR THE CITY OF RIVNE AND ITS SURROUNDINGS

According to the State Geo Cadastre of Ukraine, 98.4% of topographic maps reflect information from more than 10 years ago, and 70.3% of maps show the state of the terrain from more than 20 years ago. This negative situation with the provision of cartographic materials has become particularly noticeable since the beginning of the war, which has been going on in Ukraine for almost two years. The purpose of this paper is to study the temporal changes in topographic information of 1:50,000 scale maps, which is an urgent and very important scientific and practical task. The object of the study is the territory of Rivne city and its outskirts within two nomenclature sheets of the 1:50,000 map. The changes in topographic information that occurred between 1979 and 2021 were analysed. A digital vector map of the area was created in ArcGIS Pro software from a 1979 map using raster scanning technology. The data was updated based on satellite imagery of 11.06.2021. The results of the research indicate intensive temporal changes in topographic information - almost 50% of the territory has changed over 42 years. There has been an aggressive expansion of settlements into the surrounding agricultural land - towns and villages have more than doubled their territory. The rate of change in topographic information is 2.3 square kilometres per year. This applies to maps with a scale of 1:50,000. On maps of larger scale, such changes occur much faster. Therefore, in order to keep the information on topographic maps up-to-date, a differentiated approach to the frequency of map updates is proposed, depending on the scale and territory. Recommendations on update periods require further research for other map scales and different territories.

A new vector map watermarking technique in frequency domain based on LCA-transform

Two-dimensional vector maps are vulnerable to issues related to copyright owner’s protection, which have an impact on the vector-data usage in different applications. Watermarking schemes are required in order to prevent this type of attack rotation, uniform scaling and translation (RST), invariance property, embedding distortion control and a high level of capacity in their concealment of a digital vector map’s information. This process typically involves transforming an original map and embedding the watermark. In this paper, a new approach to copyright protection for vector maps is proposed using a linear cellular automata (LCA) algorithm. The approach taken is as follows: (1) an original map, which is LCA-transformed, is obtained; (2) the watermark bit insertion process is conducted on the coefficient of the transformation result frequency into the LSB pattern; and (3) the inverse LCA transformation of the map is employed to obtain the watermarked map. Subsequent analysis has found that this approach provides desirable levels of fidelity, invisibility, capacity and computational complexity. It is also resistant to geometric and signal-operations attacks and provides multi-frequency domains for digital watermarking.

THE ASSESSMENT OF CURVED CENTERLINE GENERATION IN HDMAPS BASED ON POINT CLOUDS

Abstract. Over the decades, autonomous driving technology has attracted a lot of attention and is under rapid development. However, it still suffers from inadequate accuracy in a certain area, such as the urban area, Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) hostile area, due to the multipath interference or Non-Line-of-Sight (NLOS) reception. In order to realize fully autonomous applications, High Definition Maps (HD Maps) become extra assisted information for autonomous vehicles to improve road safety in recent years. Compared with the conventional navigation maps, the accuracy requirement in HD Maps, which is 20 cm in the horizontal direction and 30 cm in 3D space, is considerably higher than the conventional one. Additionally, HD Maps consist of rich and high accurate road traffic information and road elements. For the requirement of high accuracy, conducting a Mobile Laser Scanning (MLS) system is an appropriate method to collect the geospatial data accurately and efficiently. Nowadays, digital vector maps are constructed by digitalizing manually on the collected data. However, the manual process spends a lot of manpower and is not efficient and practical for a large field. Therefore, this paper proposes to automatically construct the crucial road elements, such as road edge, lane line, and centerline, to generate the HD Maps based on point clouds collected by the MMS from the surveying company. The RMSEs in the horizontal direction of the road edge, lane line, and centerline are all lower than 30 cm in 3D space.

RST invariant watermarking technique for vector map based on LCA-transform

The dangers of copyright protection can impact 2D vector maps, having a knock-on effect on the use of vector data. To achieve invariance property, uniform RST (rotation, scaling and translation) and disguising the digital vector map’s information by implementing distortion control, is all done by using watermarking schemes. Convert an original map, then engrain the watermark. An LCA algorithm is used in this study, as a newly proposed way to protect the vector maps under copyright. The procedure is operated in this order: 1) use an original map, altered by the LCA algorithm, 2) use the coefficient of the transformation to engrain the watermark, inserting the resulting frequency into the LSB wave, 3) the watermarked map is acquired by using the inverse LCA map transformation. Further investigations discovered that the necessary standards of fidelity and invisibility can be achieved using this technique. This procedure also gives out numerous frequency domains for digital watermarking; as well as being resilient to signal and geometric invasions.

Зміни в об’єктах підстильної поверхні та рослинному покриві в зоні відчуження Чорнобильської АЕС за період 1986−2017 рр.

The analysis results of the type surface and vegetation changes in the Exclusion Zone of Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, for the period after accident in 1986 until 2017 are presented. In the article it is shown that after the Chornobyl accident in 1986, the largest changes occurred with vegetation on agricultural lands. Analysis of the current state of vegetation showed that the area of restored forest plantations on uncultivated lands amounted to –31% of the Chornobyl NPP Exclusion Zone. Studies have shown that fires cause great damage to the forest ecosystems. Forests and woody vegetation of natural regeneration damaged by the fire in the Chornobyl NPP Exclusion Zone as of 2017 amounted to 41.3 km2, which is about 4% of the area of forest vegetation. It is noted that the movement of certain volumes of radioactive waste from temporary storage points affect changes in the levels of pollution of environmental components in the Chornobyl NPP Exclusion Zone. Cartographic calculations showed that the areas allocated for the enterprises of the main and auxiliary cycle in the Chornobyl NPP Exclusion Zone occupy an area of about 56 km2 , of which 42% is covered with woody vegetation. The condition of such forested areas affects fire safety on stationary and temporary areas intended for localization of radioactive waste. It is stated about the expediency of organizing mineralized strips, conducting timely measures to care for plantations around such areas. Such measures are — felling of damaged stands, clearing the area of dead parts of trees, planting forests on burned areas. Maps obtained after the analysis and assessment of spatial heterogeneity of the territory are presented in the article. The maps show the location of areas of enterprises that may be sources of radioactive contamination and natural complexes that was changed. It created a set of digital raster and vector maps which reflect the structure of the study area for different periods. Vector maps were developed based on remote sensing data and fairly accurately reflect the modern structure of the territory, capture processes occurring within the territory. It concluded that the cartographic classification of objects on the ground surface and types of vegetation may be used for analyzing changes in the Exclusion Zone and unconditional resettlement of Chornobyl NPP, as well as parameterization of the type of underlying surface for assessment of environmental pollution. It is noted that the combination of the created cartographic material with the data of actual surveys of forest ecosystems makes it possible to more accurately determine the amount of bioresources of the Exclusion Zone in areas with high levels of pollution. The obtained cartographic materials make it possible to determine and display the modern spatial structure and characteristics on the Earth’s underlying surface and to calculate the areas in the changed territory.

Copyright authentication of digital vector maps based on spatial autocorrelation indices

Digital watermarking is increasingly being used in the copyright authentication of vector maps to prevent misuse and illegal distribution. However, it is difficult to avoid influences on watermarks when undergoing spacial projection transformations, vector data compression, and other common geographic information system (GIS) operations. In this paper, a highly robust copyright-authentication method is proposed for digital vector maps. First, we discuss the descriptive approaches to the geometric characterization of map elements by building the graphical complexity index. Next, using the Moran’s I Coefficient (MC), a type of spatial autocorrelation index (SAI), we effectively integrate the spatial topological information and the spatial geometric shape information into the meaningless zero-watermark, which is robust against common GIS operations. Finally, we generate a meaningful zero-watermark by using the exclusive OR (XOR) process to combine the meaningless zero watermark and useful copyright information, which not only embeds the copyright information but also effectively avoids authentication conflict. These results demonstrate that this method is robust to translation, scaling, compression, rotation and edit operations (robustness is 80%). The robustness suggests that this method can readily support business applications for copyright certification of digital vector maps.

Digital geomarketing methods for analyzing the development of the economy of modern urban space

The paper proposes a method for conducting a digital analysis of geocompetition, which allows exploring the competitive environment on digital vector maps. The method includes four stages of analysis: the study of the competitive environment of the city using the function “density of nuclei”; statistical geoprocessing of data using the Clarke-Evans tool; the formation and visualization of the coverage areas of shopping facilities; creation of a polygonal topology based on Thiessen polygons to explore business opportunities for the spatial development of the city. The proposed methodology was tested on the data of the capital of the Republic of Crimea — Simferopol. The purpose of the study is to create a methodology that allows justifying the strategy of placing commercial enterprises based on digital geomarketing technologies. The study shows strong congestion of the city center with trade enterprises, high density of their location, exceeding the standard service areas by two and half times. It identifies the buffer zones around the stores and areas of supersaturated supply, which are the potential “cannibalization zones”, that is, areas of potential risk for doing business. Recommendations were made on the use of geo-information technologies as a necessary tool for local authorities to make decisions regarding the issuance of licenses to commercial facilities in the context of the modern development of urban space and the digital economy.

Robust Watermarking Scheme for GIS Vector Maps

With the fast progress of information technology and the computer networks, it becomes very easy to reproduce and share the geospatial data due to its digital styles. Therefore, the usage of geospatial data suffers from various problems such as data authentication, ownership proffering, and illegal copying ,etc. These problems can represent the big challenge to future uses of the geospatial data. This paper introduces a new watermarking scheme to ensure the copyright protection of the digital vector map. The main idea of proposed scheme is based on transforming the digital map to frequently domain using the Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) in order to determine suitable areas to insert the watermark data. The digital map is separated into the isolated parts.Watermark data are embedded within the nominated magnitudes in each part when satisfied the definite criteria. The efficiency of proposed watermarking scheme is assessed within statistical measures based on two factors which are fidelity and robustness. Experimental results demonstrate the proposed watermarking scheme representing ideal trade off for disagreement issue between distortion amount and robustness. Also, the proposed scheme shows robust resistance for many kinds of attacks.

A Novel Evaluation Approach for Line Simplification Algorithms towards Vector Map Visualization

Line simplification is an important method in the context of cartographic generalization, which is helpful for improving the visualization of digital vector maps. The evaluation method for the simplification algorithms is still an open issue when facing applications of vector data, including progressive transmission, web mapping, and so on. This paper proposes a novel evaluation approach for line simplification algorithms based on several factors towards vector map visualization, including the features of displays, map scales, and the ability of the human eye to distinguish pixels. In order to ensure the evaluation of the line simplification algorithms is conducted under the consistent strength of simplification, a measurement approach for the difference between an original line and its simplified one is proposed in this study, and the method of solving the appropriate simplification threshold is presented. With this method, four simplification algorithms are evaluated at five map scales using three evaluation indicators: standard deviation, compression ratio, and simplification time. The experiment and results show the evaluation approach in this study is feasible, and represents a good means in which to facilitate the application of line simplification towards progressive transmission and visualization of vector maps.

Adaptive Multi-Scale Population Spatialization Model Constrained by Multiple Factors: A Case Study of Russia

Population spatialization is the foundation for the visualization and analysis of population integrated with other information, such as environmental resources, economy, and public health. The existing population spatialization models have solved many problems for population distribution, but most of these studies have focused on a specific, single-scale approach and ignored the scale transformation for population spatialization. However, multi-scale visualization and the analysis of spatial information need multi-scale information. Meanwhile, the population distribution map as one kind of thematic map is always overlaid with the digital vector map or remote sensing map and visualized in the Web Geographic Information Systems (Web GIS), so it should adapt to the map scale showed in browser, when the user zoom in and zoom out. Hence adaptive multi-scale is necessary for population spatialization. Therefore, in this study, an adaptive multi-scale population spatialization model (APSM) is proposed with comprehensive factors constrained. These factors are residential area, land cover, public transport, hydrology, terrain, and climate. All of them are closely associated with population distribution. The overall methodology of APSM and the process for APSM are expounded in this paper. Meanwhile, with a case study of Russia, the processes of APSM for Russia are stated, and a population spatialization tool is implemented for expanding the application of APSM. The experimental analysis showed that APSM satisfied the requirement of geospatial analysis well and obtained a reliable accuracy.

AUTOMATIC BLOCKED ROADS ASSESSMENT AFTER EARTHQUAKE USING HIGH RESOLUTION SATELLITE IMAGERY

Abstract. In 2010, an earthquake in the city of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, happened quite by chance an accident and killed over 300000 people. According to historical data such an earthquake has not occurred in the area. Unpredictability of earthquakes has necessitated the need for comprehensive mitigation efforts to minimize deaths and injuries. Blocked roads, caused by debris of destroyed buildings, may increase the difficulty of rescue activities. In this case, a damage map, which specifies blocked and unblocked roads, can be definitely helpful for a rescue team. In this paper, a novel method for providing destruction map based on pre-event vector map and high resolution world view II satellite images after earthquake, is presented. For this purpose, firstly in pre-processing step, image quality improvement and co-coordination of image and map are performed. Then, after extraction of texture descriptor from the image after quake and SVM classification, different terrains are detected in the image. Finally, considering the classification results, specifically objects belong to “debris” class, damage analysis are performed to estimate the damage percentage. In this case, in addition to the area objects in the “debris” class their shape should also be counted. The aforementioned process are performed on all the roads in the road layer.In this research, pre-event digital vector map and post-event high resolution satellite image, acquired by Worldview-2, of the city of Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital, were used to evaluate the proposed method. The algorithm was executed on 1200×800 m2 of the data set, including 60 roads, and all the roads were labelled correctly. The visual examination have authenticated the abilities of this method for damage assessment of urban roads network after an earthquake.

Assessment of seismic building vulnerability based on rapid visual screening technique aided by aerial photographs on a GIS platform

The stability of buildings in seismic prone areas depends upon the structural behavior of buildings subjected to ground motion. Buildings of plan and vertical irregularities with respect to either geometry or stiffness have exhibited poor performance during past earthquakes . Identification of seismic building vulnerability is required for metropolitan cities which have moderate to high level of seismic proneness and have a high building density. Inspection of a large number of buildings individually requires enormous time and manpower. Using aerial photograph approach in GIS platform is an ideal choice to overcome these constraints. Chennai city is the thirty-fourth largest city in the world and prone to moderate earthquake hazards. This paper presents a methodology to analyze and predict the seismic vulnerability of buildings with five storeys and above in Chennai. Aerial photographic data of all buildings, land features and roads, within the city and its direct surroundings, were digitized and incorporated on a GIS platform, resulting in a digital vector map. A number of structural parameters determined on the basis of engineering knowledge and observations through rapid visual screening (RVS) have been used to identify the plan and vertical irregularities of the buildings. A new vulnerability scoring system to identify the level of damageability has been introduced based on RVS technique and compared with traditional grading system. Subsequent to RVS, a database of buildings having different range of vulnerability scores has been prepared. The percentage of desirable and undesirable features of buildings with respect to their contribution to damage was assessed based on past experiences and vulnerability scores of buildings. The survey shows that 30 % of the buildings are in the A category of being vulnerable to collapse. There are no buildings that can be classified as defect-free. It is also to note that 55–70 % of buildings lie in the category of D (low damage vulnerability).

USE OF GEOINFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES IN AN GEOECOLOGICAL EVALUATION FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT OF NATURAL AND TECHNOGENIC COMPLEXES

Aim. Analysis of the status of the areas with the use of geoinformation technologies for environmental assessment to ensure sustainable development of natural-anthropogenic systems. Methods. Researches in field conditions and methods of chemical analyses of samples are conducted. Laboratory and analytical researches are executed with use of the standard techniques on the nuclear and absorbing spectrophotometer. The obtained data were analyzed by mathematical and statistical methods. Ecological maps are constructed with application of GIS-technologies. Results. Laid the basis for integrated environmental assessments of urban areas using geographic information systems. Conducted research to identify pollution of soil, air, and vegetation. Created digital environmental databases. Main conclusions. The developed techniques and algorithms of creation of a database and thematic digital vector maps and use of geoinformation technologies in ecological researches can be recommended as basic at similar researches both in territories of the cities of the Republic of Dagestan, and after the corresponding adjustment and completion when studying natural landscapes

Generation and Application of Obstacles in Military Vehicle Equipment Running Simulation

First of all, the characteristics of obstacles in military vehicle equipment running simulation were described, and three generating methods, that is, extracting from digital vector map, manual drawing and dynamic generating during simulation, were expatiated. According to the demands, the data structure of obstacles was designed. Afterwards, the spatial overlay analysis of the moving route and the obstacles set, appending and deleting obstacles, and breaking a new path in obstacles were researched respectively.

Progressive vector compression for high-accuracy vector map data

With the increase in the number of applications using digital vector maps and the development of surveying techniques, a large volume of GIS (geographic information system) vector maps having high accuracy and precision is being produced. However, to achieve their effective transmission while preserving their high positional quality, these large amounts of vector map data need to be compressed. This paper presents a compression method based on a bin space partitioning data structure, which preserves a high-level accuracy and exact precision of spatial data. To achieve this, the proposed method a priori divides a map into rectangular local regions and classifies the bits of each object in the local regions to three types of bins, defined as category bin (CB), direction bin (DB), and accuracy bin (AB). Then, it encodes objects progressively using the properties of the classified bins, such as adjacency and orientation, to obtain the optimum compression ratio. Experimental results verify that our method can encode vector map data constituting less than 20% of the original map data at a 1-cm accuracy degree and that constituting less than 9% at a 1-m accuracy degree. In addition, its compression efficiency is greater than that of previous methods, whereas its complexity is lower for close to real-time applications.

Application of geoinformation technologies for the assessment of landscape structure using landscape-ecological indexes (case study of the Handlová landslide)

New versions of geoinformation technologies and its various extensions enable to obtain quality and more accurate information about the landscape and its properties. The aim of the paper is to point out to the use of selected extensions in geographic information systems (GIS) which make the time-consuming and complex calculations within the analysis, assessment and interpretation of the landscape more effective. With the use of digital vector map, it is possible, by the means of GIS extensions, to calculate the number, shape, size, dispersion, diversity, neighboring relations of patches as well as many other indexes. In the paper, we deal with three extensions (V-LATE, Patch Analyst, and StraKa) that are compatible with ArcGIS/ArcView software. These specialized extensions were applied for the analysis of the spatial landscape structure in the area of the catastrophic Handlová landslide from the year 1961 which was analyzed also in terms of changes in landscape structure for the time period of 228 years.

Registration of vector maps based on multiple geometric features in topological aspects

Maps are one of the most intuitive tools for recording and representing geographic information. Digital maps composed of vectors are mostly used for preserving cartographic data in a compact and efficient manner. However, the registration of multiple vector maps is an essential step when geographic information from various sources is used in an integrated analysis. Typically, control points are used as observables to solve the transformation parameters of a registration model, while check points are used for quality assessment. As a consequence, poor distribution or an insufficient number of control or check points might lead to a biased registration solution. In this study, linear features and projective invariant points were both used as observables in a registration analysis between multiple vector maps. The goal was to provide an improved geometric constraint when solving the transformation parameters. Furthermore, two numerical indices, namely the absolute consistency and relative geometric similarity, were used to evaluate the quality of the registration solution. Based on the results of a case study, the proposed approach has been shown to be capable of better making use of the geometric connotation inherent in a vector map and providing a comprehensive quality evaluation for the obtained transformation solution. Consequently, a more reliable and robust registration analysis for digital vector maps can be achieved when the proposed approach is implemented.

Research of Lossless Digital Watermarking Technology

The digital map is an important and indispensable resource to the national strategic security and social economic development. At the present, needs to focus on resolving the utility question of digital vector map copyright protection technology, furthermore, the information hiding technology is the basic content of the research areas of the digital vector maps copyright protection. It is proposed a digital copyright protection scheme, based on the principle of unauthorized cannot resume, copyright embedding operation selection partly transform for the map content. Processing area determined by the spatial clustering analysis method that is based on grid density.

Proposed an Intelligent Watermarking in GIS Environment

GIS (Geographic Information System) has been used in military and commercial applications for many years. The data of GIS are very expensive. So, it is very important to prevent any illegal use of these data. Digital watermarking can provide potential solution. As we know, in most of the applications of digital watermarking, the watermark is used to protect the copyright of digital product. In the other word, the product (cover) is important. According to this fact, we presented 2D vector map watermarking for GIS digital map based on a new watermarking concept called intelligent watermarking. The need of this concept is increased in the last years to protect the wide range of digital maps data transmitted via computer networks. Briefly, the scheme depends on the feature of the cover. The embedding of the watermark can be done in several steps. First extracting some features from the original digital vector map. Second combine these features with external watermark in order to get the intelligent watermark. Third embed the intelligent watermark in the vector map to get the watermarked vector map. The extracting of the watermark can be done in several steps. First, extract the intelligent watermark from the watermarked digital vector map. Second decompose the intelligent watermark into features and external watermark. Third reverse the extracted features to features of watermarked vector map. So, if the watermarked vector map is attacked, this watermarked vector map will be distorted, otherwise will not be distorted. Our proposed scheme can be applied in all the other media.

A new ant based distributed framework for urban road map updating from high resolution satellite imagery

Receiving updated information about the network of roads from high resolution satellite imagery is a crucially important issue in continuously changing developing urban regions. Considering experiences in road extraction and also exploiting distributed evolutionary computational approaches, in this paper a new framework for road map updating from remotely sensed data is proposed. Three main computational entities of ant-agent, seed extractor and algorithm library are designed and road map updating is performed through three main stages of verification of the old map, extraction of possible roads and grouping of the results of both stages. Extracting corresponding pixels to each road element in the map, an object level supervised classification or any available road verification algorithm from the library capable of producing a road likeliness value is applied. Since road extraction is a simple and also a complex problem, more comprehensive algorithms are chosen from library iteratively by ant-agents so the decision about verification and rejection of each road element is finally made. Ant-agents facilitate choosing road elements and moving of ant agents via stigmergic communication by pheromone cast and evaporation. The proposed method is developed and tested using GeoEye-1 pan-sharpen imagery and 1:2000 corresponding digital vector map of the region. As observed, the results are satisfactory in terms of detection, verification and extraction of roads and generation of the updated map specifically in case of inspection of main roads. Besides, some missed road items are reported in case of inspection of bystreets and alleys specially when situated at the margin of the image. Completeness, correctness and quality measures are computed for evaluation of the initial and the resulted updated maps. The computed measures verify the improvement of the updated map.