Vector Data

Synonyms

Geometric modeling; Vector graphics

Definition

Spatial data is data related to a location. Some examples include the population of a city, the type of soil in a region, and data from remote-sensing satellites. In the first example, the city could be considered as a location and the population is the data or a feature. In the second example, the region is a collection of locations and the type of soil is the feature. Note that a location may have one or more features. For example, it may be useful to represent both the population and the average age group of a city.

It is necessary to convert spatial data into a form that a computer can understand. Both models of the data must have the property of storing locations, features and the association between the two. There are two major ways to model spatial data: as vector data or as raster data.

Vector data involves storing data as geometric objects. For example, a road can be represented as a combination of lines. In this case,...