Automatic seamless matching of area boundaries

Abstract

In big vectoriesed digital maps, a great number of overlaps and gaps may occur at the boundaries between adjacent polygons. Not only can it be a mammoth and tedious task to carry out editing tasks by hand, but also the process of editing for aligning boundaries seamlessly may alter the position of anchoring points and lead to introduction of errors. In particular, anchoring points for boundaries of polygons may have legal implications. For instance, anchoring points may represent the positions of demarcation poles or stones. Hitherto, there has not yet been a total solution for automatic handling of problems of boundary conflicts between adjacent area features. One may attempt to use snapping (ESRI 2018) or edit positions of anchoring points to re-align boundary line segments to form perfect matches of boundary lines. However, this may incur yet another problem of introducing alteration of boundary defining points through adding, deleting or moving the positions of anchoring points. How to automate the process of aligning boundary lines between adjacent area features for seamless matching poses a major challenge to the design of an algorithm and programmatic solutions. This paper presents a new solution for achieving automated seamless matching of area boundaries without adding, deleting or moving any anchoring point. It is believed it is interesting to a wide range of professionals working in the fields of spatial science, Geographical Information System, cartography and land and property registry.