Template matching and simplification method for building features based on shape cognition

Abstract

This study proposes a template matching simplification method from the perspective of shape cognition based on the typical template characteristics of building distributions and representations. The method first formulates a series of templates to abstract the building shape by generalizing their polygons and analyzing their symbolic meanings, then conducts the simplification by searching and matching the most similar template that can be used later to replace the original building. On the premise of satisfying the individual geometric accuracy on a smaller scale, the proposed method can enhance the impression of well-known landmarks and reflect the pattern in mapping areas by the symbolic template. The turning function that describes shape by measuring the changes of the tangent-angle as a function of the arc-length is employed to obtain the similar distance between buildings and template polygons, and the least squares model is used to control the geometry matching of the candidate template. Experiments on real datasets are carried out to assess the usefulness of this method and compare it with two existing methods. The experiments suggest that our method can preserve the main structure of building shapes and geometric accuracy.