Similarity measures and algorithms for cartographic schematization
Wouter Meulemans · TU/e Research Portal · 2014
After almost four years, some of the main results of my research have been bundled into this thesis.Though I proudly present this as "my research", a number of people have had a major influence on me and this research, both directly and indirectly.Therefore, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank them.I apologize for anyone I may forget to mention.First of all, I would like to thank my supervisors, Bettina Speckmann and Kevin Buchin, for being there with council, suggestions, feedback, thoughts and ideas.Bettina was my supervisor already for a project of the Master's Honors Programme and set me on the path of schematization, at the time described to me as "something with drawing a polygon using only horizontal and vertical lines".I could have never imagined then that this topic would so capture my interest.I was very happy when Bettina hired me afterwards as a PhD student which allowed me to further investigate schematization research.At this point in time, Kevin also became involved as a supervisor, which led to a significant increase of attention towards the Fréchet distance: I would conjecture that no one has managed to leave Kevin's office without being "infected" with the Fréchet distance.1 I surely did not mind, as this posed many interesting questions and challenges.Both Bettina and Kevin have influenced my views of academia and science and taught me how to conduct, write and present research in a sound way.I greatly appreciate the way of supervising that allowed me to pursue my own research interests within computational geometry.I never heard "we cannot do that because...", only "we can do that after..." (though it seems that we generate problems faster than we solve them).The Algorithms group in Eindhoven has always been a friendly work environment.For this, I would like to thank everyone who has been part of the research group at some point over the last four years: