A Multiresolution topographic surface database
J. Mark Ware, Christopher B. Jones · International Journal of Geographical Information Systems · 1992
Multiresolution data structures provide a means of retrieving geographical features from a database at levels of detail which are adaptable to different scales of representation. A database design is presented which integrates multi-scale storage of point, linear and polygonal features, based on the line generalization tree, with a multi-scale surface model based on the Delaunay pyramid. The constituent vertices of topologically-structured geographical features are thus distributed between the triangulated levels of a Delaunay pyramid in which triangle edges are constrained to follow those features at differing degrees of generalization. Efficient locational access is achieved by imposing a spatial index on each level of the pyramid.