Urban road network generalization based on strokes

Road network is the important part of the urban map database, and generalization of urban road network is an important issue for city map database management. The strategy of road selection and the maintenance of spatial pattern are two major challenges in the generalization of road networks. An effective process for road network generalization is introduced in this paper. The first step is to extract strokes from the road network and evaluate every stroke using a grading evaluation method. It helps to maintain the structure of the road network and to define the level of importance of each stroke. Then, in the process of road selection, random sampling is applied in order to maintain the spatial distribution characteristics of the road network, meanwhile, an additional constraint condition is employed to ensure the connectivity of selected roads. The experiments show the effectiveness and reasonability of the approached method of generalization of urban road network.