Faculty Publications, Working Papers

RMU Research #: 28551
 
Title: A Distributed Approach to Fast Map Overlay
 
Author/PI: Peter Y Wu
 
Date(s): 08/26/2005
 
Category: Computer Information Systems
 
Type: Conference Paper
 
Description: Map overlay is the core operation in many GIS applications. We briefly survey the different approaches, and describe a distributed algorithm for fast map overlay. To take advantage of parallel processing, we partition the object space of the map into rectangular grids. Since intersection points can only occur between edges sharing the same grid, the approach provides as easy way to divide up the work of determining intersection points into separable tasks. Analysis of the algorithm shows that the approach is not worst case optimal, but it gains performance by parallel processing, and when edge segment lengths are relatively uniform, experiments show that the average case performance is very good. The approach may also be generalized for spatial data handling on the internet where we can improve performance on scalable system architecture.
 
Related Site: http://academics.rmu.edu/faculty/wu/
 
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