Combined Matching Approach of Road Networks Under Different Scales Considering Constraints of Cartographic Generalization

Identifying corresponding objects from geospatial databases at different levels of detail is crucial, especially in multi-scale road network matching, which is the prerequisite of data conflation, updating and quality assessment. 'Stroke' has a considerable effect on automatic road network generalization, and is essential in the road network matching process. In road network generalization, topological relationships may change, and some roads may be deleted. In this paper, we propose a combined stroke-based matching approach of road networks considering the constraints of cartographic generalization for road networks under different scales. In the entire stroke matching, we utilize the modified Hausdorff distance for geometric similarity. We consider the topological differences in the structural similarity calculation and propose a new weight calculation method. Partial stroke matching can further identify the corresponding roads with changes and updates in different scales. We also propose a method of roundabout detection and matching. The proposed approach could not only match road networks with a small scale difference, but also road networks with a large scale difference. And it can successfully identify the M:N, M:1, 1:1, 1/M:1/N, and 1/M:1 matching relationships. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is verified by experimental results.