Rana, S; Wood, J; (2000) Weighted and metric surface networks - new insights and an interactive application for their generalisation in Tcl/Tk. (CASA Working papers 25). Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (UCL): London, UK.

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Abstract

The idea of characterising the different forms of natural topographic surfaces by a topologicalmodel based on their fundamental surface features has attracted many proposals. In this paper, adetailed discussion and new proposals on various issues related to the concept, generation, andvisualisation of two graph theoretic based surface topology data structures ? Weighted SurfaceNetworks and their improved version, Metric Surface Networks - are presented. Also presented isan interactive Tcl/Tk application called Surface Topology Toolkit, which has been developed tosupport the discussion on aspects of their generalisation and visualisation. The highlight of theSurface Topology Toolkit is the utility to allow arbitrary contraction unlike the usual verteximportance based criterion. This paper proposes that effective automated surface topologymodelling based on these surface networks requires (a) further research in the development of?computing? algorithms that will accurately locate critical surface points, be able to establishtopological links, and also check topological consistency, (b) transforming their 2D straight linegraph like appearance to 3D to improve visualisation and contraction, and (c) assessment and userawarenessabout the effects of each type of contraction criterion on the topography.

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