Novel Approaches for Aligning Geospatial Vector Maps

Abstract

The surge in data across diverse fields presents an essential need for advanced techniques to merge and interpret this information. With a special emphasis on compiling geospatial data, this integration is crucial for unlocking new insights from geographic data, enhancing our ability to map and analyze trends that span across different locations and environments with more authenticity and reliability. Existing techniques have made progress in addressing data fusion; however, challenges persist in fusing and harmonizing data from different sources, scales, and modalities. This research presents a comprehensive investigation into the challenges and solutions in vector map alignment, focusing on developing methods that enhance the precision and usability of geospatial data. We explored and developed three distinct methodologies for polygonal vector map alignment: ProximityAlign, which excels in precision within urban layouts but faces computational challenges; the Optical Flow Deep Learning-Based Alignment, noted for its efficiency and adaptability; and the Epipolar Geometry-Based Alignment, effective in data-rich contexts but sensitive to data quality. In practice, the proposed approaches serve as tools to benefit from as much as possible from existing datasets while respecting a spatial reference source. It also serves as a paramount step for the data fusion task to reduce its complexity.