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Abstraction, Levels of Detail, and Hierarchies in Map Series

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Book cover Spatial Information Theory. Cognitive and Computational Foundations of Geographic Information Science (COSIT 1999)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1661))

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Abstract

Humans know how to ‘abstract away’ detail instinctively. This is a necessary survival trait, since we cannot possibly save in our brain all the detail around us. So we extract only the necessary information for the task at hand. While abstracting, we extract a subset from a very large but finite set of objects around us. If continuing to choose subsets of objects with even more abstract properties we create levels of detail of objects. The structure created by such an abstraction process is a hierarchy. The type of hierarchy depends on the operation used for the abstraction process. Current spatial information systems lack the structures, tools, and operations to handle representations with multiple levels of detail. Very little is known about using hierarchies for the description of ordered levels of detail. This paper explores the relationships between abstraction, levels of detail, and hierarchies first theoretically and then practically with an example from analogue map series.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geoinformation, Technical University Vienna, Gusshausstr. 27-29, A-1040, Vienna, Austria

    Sabine Timpf

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  1. Sabine Timpf
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Universität Hamburg, Fachbereich Informatik, Vogt-Kölln-Straße 30, D-22527, Hamburg, Germany

    Christian Freksa

  2. Department of Geography, State University of New York at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, 14261, USA

    David M. Mark

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Timpf, S. (1999). Abstraction, Levels of Detail, and Hierarchies in Map Series. In: Freksa, C., Mark, D.M. (eds) Spatial Information Theory. Cognitive and Computational Foundations of Geographic Information Science. COSIT 1999. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1661. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48384-5_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48384-5_9

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-66365-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-48384-7

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