Abstract
In the geographic domain shape features are of concern for several objects, such as borders between countries and counties as well as other administrative units, highways, coastlines, rivers, and other objects determining the infrastructure of a country such as telecommunication networks: we have to deal with shape features of those objects in the context of spatial planning and spatial databases. Defining Gestalt features of shapes, however, is a challenging issue. While in computer vision many features have been devised emphasis has been put on precision. The complementary approach consists in defining features which are not precise but allow shape properties to be defined at the categorical level. As a consequence those features are closely related to human perception and as such appropriate as comprehensible features, aiding in searching spatial databases for specific objects. Additionally those features are cheaper from the computational point of view: they compactly characterise shapes and they can equally compactly be employed in the context of storage, comparison, and retrieval.1
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Gottfried, B. (2007). Characterising Straightness Qualitatively. In: Fabrikant, S.I., Wachowicz, M. (eds) The European Information Society. Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-72385-1_25
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-72385-1_25
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