An iterative displacement method for conflict resolution in map generalization

Cartographic generalization involves a trade-off between information conten t, accuracy and legibility. Conflict resolution, dealing with the problems of having too much information competing for too little space, is an import ant part of this process. For an iterative approach to conflict resolution two things are required: a measure of the acceptability of each intermediat e map, and a strategy for finding a better one. Both the map quality measur e and search strategy can have a large impact on the overall speed of the r esulting process. This paper confines its map quality criterion to the mini mum distance separating pairs of map features, an important component of le gibility. This measure is combined with an iterative improvement technique. based on maximizing nearest neighbour distances, which attempts to find an acceptable solution where conflicts can be solved by displacement alone. T he method also indicates those groups of features for which no such solutio n is possible. An experimental evaluation compares the method with one whic h uses simulated annealing and highlights its advantages with regard to gen erating many fewer candidate states and operating in a deterministic manner .