Robust Genetic Algorithms for High Quality Map Labeling

The problem of placing labels on maps has been around for about twenty years and has proven to be a diÆcult one. A variety of methods has been proposed to generate good labelings, with a wide range of results. This paper will propose a stochastic approach using Genetic Algorithms to solve the problem of placing labels for point features. This method generates high quality labelings and is robust in the sense that it is built to be extendible to other problem instances (involving point features) without dramatic changes of the algorith