Formalizing Importance: Parameters for Settlement Selection from a
Geographic Database
Doug Flewelling and Max Egenhofer
Abstract
This paper describes a model for selecting features from a
geographic database to be displayed on a computer generated map
display. An engineering approach is used to generate a set of
geographic features similar to what would be chosen by a human,
without attempting to replicate the human selection process.
Selection is a process of choosing from a set of objects according
to some ordering scheme. Humans have a highly developed ability to
order sets of things. The model presented capitalizes on this
ability by relying on user-defined ordering functions to produce an
ordered set (ranked list) of geographic features. It is
possible to process systematically the ranked list such that
measurable qualities of the set such as subset relationships,
pattern, dispersion, density, or importance are preserved. The
resulting set of candidate features is placed on the map display
using accepted generalization techniques.