Publications

Recent increase in the production of high-resolution digital elevation models (DEMs) from lidar data has led to interest in their use for terrain mapping. Although the impact of different resolutions has been studied relative to terrain characteristics like roughness, slope and curvature, its relationship to the extraction of terrain features remains unclear. To address this question, this study t

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the United States' official national topographic mapping organization, is building and maintaining geographic databases for fundamental base geographic layers of land cover, structures, boundaries, hydrography, geographic names, transportation, elevation, and orthoimagery as The National Map. Data from the 3D Elevation Program, the National Hydrography Dataset an

Semantic technology based on the Resource Description Framework (RDF) modeling environment has introduced new data management capabilities that can lead to innovative cartographic techniques. This report describes research toward more semantically expressive linked geospatial data mapping, topics of research, and an avenue for further  international collaboration.

This paper reports on a new Area Preserving Segment Collapse (APSC) algorithm for simplifying polygonal boundaries while preserving polygonal area at simplified target scales and minimizing areal displacement. A general segment collapse algorithm is defined by iteratively collapsing segments to Steiner points in priority order, guided by placement and displacement functions. The algorithm is speci

This report describes a software tool that calculates costs associated with the reconstruction of supply chain interdependent critical infrastructure in the advent of a catastrophic failure by either outside forces (extreme events) or internal forces (fatigue). This tool fills a gap between search and recover strategies of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (or FEMA) and construction techniqu

Large spatial databases often labeled as geospatial big data exceed the capacity of commonly used computing systems as a result of data volume, variety, velocity, and veracity. Additional problems also labeled with V’s are cited, but the four primary ones are the most problematic and focus of this chapter (Li et al., 2016, Panimalar et al., 2017).  Sources include satellites, aircraft and drone pl

Whither the topographic map? Topographic mapping historically has been approached as a map factory operation through the period 1879-1990. During this time, data were field and photogrammetrically collected; cartographically verified and annotated creating a compilation manuscript; further edited, generalized, symbolized, and produced as a graphic output product using lithography, or more recently

National Mapping Agencies (NMAs) are still among the main end users of research into automated generalisation, which is transferred into their produc- tion lines via various means. This chapter includes contributions from seven NMAs, illustrating how automated generalisation is used in practice within their partly or fully automated databases and maps production lines, what results are currently b

Maps are an important medium that enable people to comprehensively understand the configuration of cultural activities and natural elements over different times and places. Although a massive number of maps are available in the digital era, how to effectively and accurately locate and access the desired map on the Internet remains a challenge today. Previous works partially related to map-type cla

The mutable nature of low-order streams makes regular updating of surface water maps necessary for accurate representation. Low-order streams make up roughly half the streams in the conterminous United States by length, and small inaccuracies in stream head location can result in significant error in stream reach, order, and density. Reliable maps of stream features are vital for hydrologic modeli

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Geospatial Program (NGP) seeks to i) create semantically-accessible terrain features from the pixel-based 3D Elevation Program (3DEP) data, and ii) enhance the usability of the USGS Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) by associating boundaries with GNIS features whose spatial representation is currently limited to 2D point locations. Geographic obj

High-resolution (HR) digital elevation models (DEMs), such as those at resolutions of 1 and 3 meters, have increasingly become more widely available, along with lidar point cloud data. In a natural environment, a detailed surface water drainage network can be extracted from a HR DEM using flow-direction and flow-accumulation modeling. However, elevation details captured in HR DEMs, such as roads a