A stochastic error process of curves is proposed as the error model to describe the errors of curves in GIS. In terms of the stochastic process, four characteristics concerning the local error of curves, namely, mean error function, standard error function, absolute error function, and the correlation function of errors , are put forward. The total error of a curve is expressed by a mean square integral of the stochastic error process. The probabilistic meanings and geometric meanings of the characteristics mentioned above are also discussed. A scan digitization experiment is designed to check the efficiency of the model. In the experiment, a piece of contour line is digitized for more than 100 times and lots of sample functions are derived from the experiment. Finally, all the error characteristics are estimated on the basis of sample functions. The experiment results show that the systematic error in digitized map data is not negligible, and the errors of points on curves are chiefly dependent on the curvature and the concavity of the curves.
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