AUTOMATIC DATA ACQUISITION FROM TOPOGRAPHIC MAPS USING A KNOWLEDGE-BASED IMAGE ANALYSIS SYSTEM

摘要

A system for automatic data acquisition from topographic maps using knowledge-based image analysis methods is presented. The investigations are part of the interdisciplinary project Environmental Planing System. The goal is to generate a symbolic description of the map contents that may be imported into the ARC/INFO GIS for supporting the geographical tasks of the project. High resolution color scanned topographic maps (scale 1 :25 000 and 1:5 000) serve as a data source. Binary color map layers are produced by a HSI color space guided multi-level segmentation. The processing of each layer includes vectorization as well as application of methods like neural network-based symbol and object recognition for the extraction of attributed structure primitives. Subsequent analysis is based on a hierarchical structuring of the map scene with map objects and their relations. A frame mechanism is utilized for modeling the concepts of all types of map objects. A control module driven by the data model supervises the creation of instances of the concepts. The map objects located at the lowest hierarchy level correspond to the attributed structure primitives. The interface to ARC/INFO is represented by the instances of the upper levels of hierarchy.