Investigation into alternative representations for intelligent geoinformation systems in data-rich environments

Abstract

Whilst a geographical information system may use many different representations of areal data, the vector format is the most commonly utilized structure. Although some researchers consider it efficient, others comment on its drawbacks. The potential exists for the implementation of another format with improved attributes and capabilities. This paper presents a method of creating a hybrid Voronoi approach to areal representation. This representation builds the positive qualities of the vectorized model into the Voronoi diagram to improve upon functionality within a geoinformation environment. This alternative representation aims to offer notable performance improvements whilst maintaining comparable accuracy to its original counterpart. A number of important applications are summarized, as are potential extensions of this work.