Voronoi diagrams on line segments:: Measurements for contextual generalization purposes

Contextual generalization is the generalization of a group of geographic features, or of a single feature within its geographical environment. The positions of the features relatively one to the other have to be elicited before any generalization operation can be chosen and performed lest the rendering of the geographical meaning be defaced or misleading. The paper shows, through examples, that Voronoi diagrams on the segments constitutive of the polylines (as geographical features are stored in vector databases) provide a mathematically exact valuation of any feature's relation to its surroundings and thus proves reliably helpful for contextual generalization.