A multi-agent System Approach for Feature-driven Generalization of isobathymetric Line

Abstract

Generalization is an important branch in cartography. This process abstracts a map for emphasizing important items and increasing its legibility. On a nautical chart, the purpose is also to emphasize navigational hazards and main navigation routes. Therefore, the cartographer not only adapts the amount of information to the scale of the chart but also selects the information according to the types of features on the seabed and their importance to the navigator. Features are characterized by the isobaths. Methods usually applied on contours for topographic maps cannot be applied on isobaths as they do not take information about features into consideration and a new strategy coordinating different generalization operators must be defined for nautical charts. This paper focuses on isobaths generalization and introduces a new approach based on a multi-agent system. It first introduces the characteristics and constraints of isobath generalization. Then it presents the multi agent model where features and isobaths are represented by agents at different levels. Possible actions performed by each agent are presented with measures for evaluating their results according to generalization constraints.