A storage and transfer efficient data structure for variable scale vector data

This paper deals with efficient data management of variable scale vector data. Instead of pre-building a collection of data sets on different scales, we create an index structure on the base data set (largest scale data) that enables us to extract a map at exactly the right scale the moment we need it. We present both the classic version of the tGAP (topological Generalized Area Partitioning) data structure for storing our variable scale map, as well as an ameliorated version, both based on topological concepts. We prove that the classic structure needs in a worst case scenario O(e2) edges (with e the number of edges at largest scale). In practice we observed up to a factor 15 more edges in the variable scale data structure. The tGAP structure has been optimized to reduce geometric redundancy, but the explosion of additional edges is due to the changing topological references. Our main achievement finds its roots in the reduction of the number of edge rows to be stored for the ‘lean’ version (by removing the topological referential redundancy of the classic tGAP), which is beneficial both for storage and transfer. We show that storage space for the data set plus the index, is less than twice the size of the original data set. The ‘lean’ tGAP, as the classic tGAP, offers true variable scale access to the data and has also improved performance, mainly due to less data communication between server and client.GIS technologyOTB Research Institut