TR311: GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Lecture 3: Introduction to Spatial Data Structures

Instructor: Ms L.Kato

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 REPRESENTATION OF GEOGRAPHIC
INFORMATION

This lesson studies geographic phenomena

more deeply and looks into the different
types of computer representations for them.
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 Geographic Phenomena

Geographic phenomena

– are the study objects of a GIS.

– exist in the real world

– everything you see outside

– some of the things you do not see are

also geographic phenomena like
temperature. 3
 Geographic Phenomena

Geographic phenomena

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 Geographic Phenomena

A Geographic phenomena is an entity or process of

interest that:-

- Can be named or described

- Can be georeferenced (it has a position in

space)

- Can be assigned a time (interval) at which it

is/was present
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Geographic Phenomena

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 Geographic Phenomena
There are two groups of geographic phenomena,
fields and objects:
•Geographic field: a geographic phenomenon for
which, for every point in the study area, a value
can be determined.
•Geographic objects: well-distinguished, discrete,
and bounded entities, not present everywhere in
the study area (do not cover the total study
area). The space between them is potentially
empty or undetermined.
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 Geographic Phenomena
There are two groups of geographic
phenomena,
fields and objects:

Field Objects
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FIELDS
• Some typical examples of
fields are temperature,
barometric pressure and
elevation.
• In picture on the left you
see an example of
elevation. You can
measure the height
everywhere.
• Even if an area is flat,
elevation can be
measured at any point
(but the change in
elevation is minimal) 9
OBJECT
Example:
Building

Studied in groups:
Building blocks

Characteristics:
• crisp boundaries
• Inside the boundary
only one value 10
 CONTINUOUS AND DISCRETE
FIELDS
There are two types of geographic fields,
continuous fields and discrete fields:
•In a continuous field, the underlying
function is assumed to be continuous.
Continuity means that all changes in field
values are gradual (for example elevation).
•Discrete fields cut up the study space in
mutually exclusive bounded parts, with all
locations in one part having the same field
value (for example soil types).
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Continuous field
 Continuous means
that all changes in
field values are
gradual
 In a differentiable
field we can measure
the change.
 In the example on the
left, we can measure
the gradient (slope)
as the change of
elevation. 12
DISCRETE FIELD
 Discrete fields cut up
the study space in
subparts with a clear
boundary, with all
locations in one part
having the same value
 Typical examples are
land classifications,
geological classes, soil
types, landuse types,
crop types or natural
vegetation types
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OBJECT
 Objects are discrete
and bounded entities
 The space between
the objects is
potentially ‘empty’ or
‘undetermined’, the
space is not really
empty, it my contain
roads, gardens,
driveways etc, but
these are not houses
or buildings. 14
OBJECT
 The position of an
object in space is
determined by a
combination of one or
more of the following
parameters
– Location (where is it?)
– Shape (what form?)
– Size (how big?)
– Orientation
(direction?)
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GEOGRAPHIC PHENOMENA
OVERVIEW

 Discrete and continuous fields assign a value

to every location of the study space. Between
objects you have gaps, open undefined
spaces.
 Discrete fields as well as objects make use of
‘bounded’ features, in continuous fields there
are no boundaries.

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BOUNDARY
Both objects and
discrete fields have
boundaries

Two different types of

boundaries:
– Crisp boundaries
– Fuzzy boundaries

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BOUNDARY
• A crisp boundary is
one that can be
determined with
almost arbitrary
precision
• As a general rule of
thumb, crisp
boundaries are more
common in man-
made phenomena
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BOUNDARY
• Fuzzy boundaries
contrast with crisp
boundaries in that
the boundary is not a
precise line, but
rather an area of
transition.

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GEOGRAPHIC PHENOMENA
SUMMARY

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 GEOGRAPHIC PHENOMENA

OBJECT FIELD CONTINUOUS DISCRETE CRISP FUZZY

FIELD FIELD
Road
Network
Buildings
Temperatur
e
Elevation
Soil type
Adm units
Land
parcels
Soil salinity
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 REPRESENTATION OF
GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION

•So far we only discussed geographic phenomena, in

the following sections we will discuss computer
representations.
•Computer representations can be divided in two main
groups: tessellations also called the raster data model
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and the vector data model.

TESSELLATION (RASTER
REPRESENTATION)
• A tessellation is a partition of space into
mutually exclusive cells that together make
up the complete study area.
• There are two groups of tessellations:
• Regular tessellations, the cells are of the
same shape and size
• Irregular tessellations, the cells vary in
shape an size
They provide a georeferenced of the lower
left corner and the resolution (pixel size).
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TESSELLATION (RASTER
REPRESENTATION)

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REGULAR TESSELLATION
• All regular tessellations have
in common that the cells are
of the same shape and size,
and the field attribute value
assigned to a cell is associated
with the entire area occupied
by the cell.
• The size of the area that a
single raster cell represents is
called the raster’s resolution
• Some convention is needed to
state which value prevails on
cell boundaries, e.g. lower and
left boundaries belong to the
cell.
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REGULAR TESSELLATION
• When we represent a
continuous field, values
are changing
constantly
• In a regular tessellation
each cell has only one
value, that represents
the total area of a cell
(average elevation)
• There will be a
continuity gap between
adjacent cells. 26
REGULAR TESSELLATION
Two ways to improve on this
continuity issue:
Make the cell size smaller,
to make the ‘continuity
gaps’ between the cells
smaller
Assume that a cell value
only represents the value
for one specific location in
the cell, and provide a good
interpolation function for all
other locations that has the
continuity characteristic.27
REGULAR TESSELLATION

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REGULAR TESSELLATION

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REGULAR TESSELLATION

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REGULAR TESSELLATION

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IRREGULAR TESSELLATION
(QUADTREE)

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IRREGULAR TESSELLATION
• Partition into disjoint cells with varying shape and size
• Field value assigned to a cell is associated with entire
area occupied by that cell.
• Many types: e.g. region quadtree
• Based on regular tessellation of square cells, but
neighbouring cells with same value will be represented
as one bigger cell.
• Reduction in amount of memory used to store the
data
• Adaptive to spatial phenomena: more variation in
values, more cells
• Quick computation of areas with same field value
• More complex computations, algorithms 33
IRREGULAR TESSELLATION

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 The smallest
square in this
quatree represent
10*10 metres.
 The green color
represents forest
 Calculate the total
area covered by
forest

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