Vector data and topology

This is lecture six

Last week
Geographic primitives: points (nodes); lines
(chains or arc); areas (vectors/polygons);
and continuous surfaces.
Data models (as opposed to data structures).
Difference between field and object models.

Main points in lecture six

Fields, objects, and vector data models
More detail about the characteristics of the
field model.
Structuring data to enable queries: topology

What is a field?
A conceptual model of geographic variation
One of several such models
The differences between this and other models are
conceptual, that is, they exist in the human mind.
Fields and objects are examples of the limited
ways in which humans imagine space.
Fields are also models of variation within a spatiotemporal frame. They are ways of containing and
representing space at one point in time.

Familiar fields
At every point in the frame there exists a
single value of a variable
e.g. a field of temperature
e.g. a field of land surface elevation
e.g. a field of land ownership

Dimensions of fields
For geographic information, the frame may be
defined by:
two spatial dimensions (x,y)
three spatial dimensions (x,y,z)
spatial dimensions and time (e.g. x,y,t)
The field variable (or attribute) can be thought of
as a function of these dimensions
e.g. z (x,y) might denote elevation as a function of
two spatial dimensions
generally, z(x) is the value (attribute) at the
location defined by the vector x.

The world as a layer cake

It is possible to think of geographic
variation entirely in terms of fields.
In this way of thinking, geography consists
of a number of variables with single values
everywhere on the Earth's surface

Fields and reality

fields can be infinitely complex
it could take an infinite amount of information to
represent a field perfectly
representations of fields must be approximate &
the space available in a digital computer is always
limited
often, representations capture only the coarser
aspects of variation
the details or high-resolution elements are not
captured
they constitute part of the uncertainty of the
i

The vector data model

Vector data models are based on vectors or
polygons.
The polygon is the primitive or basic unit of the
vector data model.

Points as basis for objects

Fundamental primitive is a point.
Polygons are created by connecting points with
straight lines.
Some systems allow points to be connected using
arcs of circles.
Areas are defined by sets of lines
The term polygon is synonymous with area in
vector databases because of the use of straight-line
connections between points

Vector Primitives vs.

Raster Primitives

Vector applications
very large vector databases have been built
for different purposes
vector tends to dominate in transportation,
utility, marketing applications
raster and vector both used in resource
management applications

Arcs 1
Polygons in one class or layer cannot overlap and must
exhaust the space of a layer. This corresponds with the
field view. Every space on the map is covered.
Every piece of boundary line is a common boundary
between two areas. This is defined topologically.
The stretch of common boundary between two junctions
(nodes) has various names
Edge is favored by graph theorists, "vertex" for the
junctions
Chain is the word officially sanctioned by the US National
Standard

Arcs 2
Arc is used by several systems including software
from ESRI.
Arcs have attributes which identify the polygons
on either side. These attributes are part of the
topological information.
These are referred to as "left" and "right" by
reference to the sequence in which the arc is coded
Arcs (chains/edges) are fundamental in vector GIS

Storing Areas
two ways of storing areas:
1) polygon storage
every polygon is stored as a sequence of
coordinates
although most boundaries are shared between two
adjacent areas, all are input and coded twice, once
for each adjacent polygon
the two different versions of each internal
boundary line may not coincide

Storing areas as arcs

Every arc is stored as a sequence of
coordinates
Areas are built by linking arcs
Only one version of each internal shared
boundary is input and stored
Used in most current vector-based GISs

Database creation for vector data

Database creation involves several stages:

Input of the spatial data
Input of the attribute data
Linking spatial and attribute data
Spatial data is entered via digitized points and
lines, scanned and vectorized lines or directly
from other digital sources
Once the spatial data has been entered, much work
is still needed before it can be used

Objects
The main competitor to the field
conceptualization: objects or discrete entities
Geography consists of an otherwise empty space
littered with discrete entities
As with fields, this is a question of
conceptualization, not digital representation
A point can lie in any number of entities,
including zero
Entities can be points, lines, areas, or volumes in
three or more dimensions

Objects 2
Entities can have any number of characteristics (attributes)
associated with them
The attributes apply to the entire entity
With object oriented data models, location information is
just stored as one of the objects properties.
This makes management of data input and output very
simple.
Object can also be used with rasters or grids.
In this instance, the object record would contain reference
to particular cells in the raster coverage.

Advantages of objects
Scientific models may work with fields, but
people may find discrete entities more acceptable,
More easily understood natural language provides
much better ways of talking about discrete entities
it is comparatively difficult to describe a field
As Helen Couclelis writes, "People manipulate
objects, but cultivate fields" (Couclelis, 1992)

Topology
Holes and islands:
areas often have "holes" or areas of different
attributes wholly enclosed within them. Well talk
more about them at the end of the lecture when we
talk about topology.
the database must be able to deal with these
correctly
this has not always been true of GIS products

What is topology for in GIS?

Topology is basically information about
relationships, about connectivity between
areas on a map.
Another definition of topology is: those
characteristics of geometric objects (such as
a polygon) which do not depend on
measurement in a coordinate system.

Polygons and topology

Polygons are bounded by chains, and chains
are bounded by nodes.
From these direct relationships, more
complex neighbourhood can be built
based on connectivity information.
For example, the adjacent polygon is the
other object bounded by the same chain
(arc).

Connectivity and adjaceny

Topological characteristics are those which
describe connectivity.
When thinking about topology, the qualitative
relationships of connectedness and contiguity
are more important that the quantitative
attributes such as length and area.

What makes a spatial database

topological?
A spatial database is often called "topological" if
one or more of the following relationships have
been computed and stored.
Connectedness of links at intersections.
For example: which roads intersect?
Ordered set of lines (chains) forming each
polygon boundary.
For example: what lines (or arcs) are next to each
other?

Cartographic databases
By contrast, a database is called
"cartographic" if the above conditions are
absent
Objects can be manipulated individually
Relationships between them are unavailable
or are considered unimportant

What limits databases

cartographic?
Cartographic databases are less useful for
analysis of spatial data.
They are satisfactory for simple mapping of data.
Many packages designed for mapping only use
cartographic database models.
A cartographic database can usually be converted
to a topological database by computing
relationships - the process of "building topology.

Building topology
Building topology is often done when digitizing.
Once points are entered and geometric lines are
created, topology must be "built"
This involves calculating and encoding
relationships between the points, lines and areas
This information may be automatically coded into
attribute tables.

Topology rules in ArcGIS

Why have topology?

When vector data structures were first introduced,
computer processing power was limited. This
made topological information more important as it
prevented the computer from having to calculate
information for every query.
Topology was built in instead of re-calculated.
Now, topology has become less important (in
principle; most software programs actually still
rely on it).