Geographic knowledge graph (GeoKG) alignment is important for the integration and knowledge discovery of multisource geographic information and the generation of large-scale and high-quality knowledge graphs (KGs). However, the existing models/technologies face many challenges when dealing with large-scale multisource complex GeoKG alignment tasks, including the inconsistency of attribute and relationship values caused by domain differences, the inability to perceive relationships and entities, and missing geographic domain training data. To address these issues, we propose a GeoKG alignment model based on depth relationships and neighborhood awareness (named DRNA-GCNE). The DRNA-GCNE model adopts a graph neural network as the infrastructure and uses the graph attention technique to evaluate and weight the entity’s relationship attributes dynamically, thus enhancing the ability to perceive structural and semantic information in the GeoKG; concurrently, the relationship information and the multihop neighbor characteristics of the entity are effectively integrated, and the representation of the entity is further enriched. Finally, the training technique of normalized loss mining for multiple negative samples is shown. This approach increases the model’s capacity for generalization. The DRNA-GCNE model, as evaluated on two public datasets and our GeoEA2024 Chinese dataset, significantly outperforms current GeoKG entity alignment methods across key metrics.

Off-road route planning plays a vital role across various domains, including civil transportation, earthquake relief and civil production. Off-road route planning requires the consideration of a diverse range of environmental constraints, which is a considerable challenge compared with conventional route planning along existing networks. We aimed to present a multi-objective route planning method for off-road environments. Specifically, we designed a heuristic function incorporating multiple characteristics to generate reliable route planning solutions based on Pareto optimality. We also constructed a hierarchical hexagonal grid model by merging similar grid cells and reconstructing adjacency relationships with other grid cells to achieve high efficiency. The proposed method was compared with conventional route planning methods using single- and multi-objective approaches in traditional and hierarchical hexagonal grid models. The proposed method can effectively plan off-road routes, improve optimal route distance and trafficability, and provide more efficient route solutions. It reduced the planning time by 97.1% compared with multi-objective route planning based on a traditional hexagonal grid model.

Urban scenes consist of visual and semantic features and exhibit spatial relationships among land-use types (e.g. industrial areas are far away from the residential zones). This study applied a graph convolutional network with neighborhood information (henceforth, named the neighbour supporting graph convolutional neural network), to learn spatial relationships for urban scene classification. Furthermore, a co-occurrence analysis with visual and semantic features proceeded to improve the accuracy of urban scene classification. We tested the proposed method with the fifth ring road of Beijing with an overall classification accuracy of 0.827 and a Kappa coefficient of 0.769. In comparison with other methods, such as support vector machine, random forest, and general graph convolutional network, the case study showed that the proposed method improved about 10% in urban scene classification.

Previous research has tended to use a global threshold of proximity to determine neighbors, neglecting spatial heterogeneity. Flexible thresholds implemented by adaptive search radii methods account for either the spatial structures or the non-spatial similarities of objects, but few consider both. By combining the spatial and non-spatial information of objects, we propose a novel approach that can automatically determine the neighbors that are strongly related to the object of interest. We introduce the sparse reconstruction technique from the signal processing domain, which aims to remove trivial relationships in a dataset. We extend the sparse reconstruction model by assuring three principles in spatial data, including retention of the correlation of data in the non-spatial attribute domain, preservation of local dependencies in the spatial domain, and removal of trivial relationships. Extensive experiments, based on road network missing value imputation and building clustering, show that our approach can make better use of both spatial and non-spatial information than a simple addition of them.

Polygon similarity can play an important role in geographic information retrieval, map matching and updating, and spatial data mining applications. Geographic information science (GIS) represents various spatial objects as polygons, including simple polygons and polygons with holes, as well as multipolygons. Spatial objects of multipolygons possess complex structure which makes it difficult to assess their similarity. This study develops a method based on convex hulls and position graphs to measure the similarity between multipolygons. The proposed method first finds correspondences between subpolygons in the two multipolygons based on a control polygon. Thereafter, the method constructs a position graph to denote the distribution of these subpolygons and applies a turning function to compute the similarity between various graphs. Fourier transformation and moment invariants were combined to characterize the different matching relationships among subpolygons. The experiments involve three different kinds multipolygons to verify the effectiveness and robustness of proposed method. The experiments show that this approach effectively measures similarity between multipolygons. Moreover, the proposed method accounts for the relationships across the entire complex geometrical shape and components of multipolygon during measuring similarity.

As a key focus of cartography and terrain analysis, the simplification of a digital elevation model (DEM) is used to preserve the pattern features of the terrain surface while suppressing its details over multiple scales. Statistical filtering and structural analysis methods are commonly used for this process. The structural analysis method performs well in identifying terrain structural edges, while it tends to discard the smooth morphology of a terrain surface. In addition, the filter that aims to reduce noise on a surface may over-smooth the terrain structural edges. Therefore, to preserve both the terrain structural edges and smooth morphology, we propose to combine the techniques of statistical filtering and structural analysis. Specifically, all the critical elevation points and structural edges are first detected from the DEM surface by using the structural analysis method. Then, the iterative guided normal filter is used to smooth the generalized DEM with the guidance of the structure of the original surface. After this process, the terrain structure is retained in the smooth surface of the DEM. The experimental results with a real-world dataset show that our method can inherit the merits of both structural analysis and statistical filter in preserving terrain features for multi-scale DEM representations.

As one of the major concerns in cartographic generalization, road network generalization aims at maintaining the patterns of road networks across map scales. Previous methods define the pattern of road networks mainly from the perspectives of geometry and topology. However, for navigation purposes, traffic flow information is also important to generalize road networks. More specifically, road segments that have a proximity relationship in the traffic flow system should be retained together on small-scale maps to preserve the completeness of the driving route. In this regard, this study proposes an improved method for road network generalization that considers network geometry, topology, and traffic flow patterns. First, strokes are constructed from the road network data based on the ‘every best fit’ geometric principle. Then, the relationships among strokes are developed on the basis of traffic flow patterns, which are extracted from taxi trajectory data. The strokes are then selected in sequence based on the indicators of geometry, topology, and traffic flow. Our experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can preserve both the ‘Good Continuity’ principle and the transport function relationship of roads after generalization.

Volunteered geographic information (VGI), OpenStreetMap (OSM), has been used in many applications, especially when official spatial data are unavailable or outdated. However, the quality of VGI remains a valid concern. In this paper, we use the matched results between OSM building footprints and official data as the samples for training an autoencoder network, which encodes and reconstructs the sample populations according to unknown complex multivariate probability distributions. Then, the OSM data are assessed based on the theory that small probability samples contribute little to the autoencoder network and that they can be recognized by the higher reconstructed errors during training. In the method described here, the selected measures, including data completeness, positional accuracy, shape accuracy, semantic accuracy and orientation consistency between OSM and official data, are used as the inputs for a deep autoencoder network. Finally, building footprint data from Toronto, Canada, are evaluated, and experiments show that the proposed method can assess the OSM data comprehensively, objectively and accurately.

In geographic information retrieval and spatial data mining, similarity is used to resolve shape matching and clustering. Many approaches have been developed to calculate similarity between simple geometric shapes. However, complex spatial objects are common in spatial database systems, spatial query languages and Geographic Information Science (GIS) applications. With holed polygons, many similarity measurement approaches are restricted to address the relationships between holes or between the holes and the entire complex geometric shape. A successful method should remove the restrictions due to these complex relations and retain invariant during geometric translation (rotation, moving and scaling). To overcome these deficiencies, we utilize position graphs to describe the distribution of holes in complex geometric shapes by storing invariants, such as angles and distances. In addition, Fourier descriptors and the position graph-based method are used to measure the similarity between holed polygons. Experiments show that the proposed method takes into account the relationships in an entire complex geometric shape. It can effectively calculate the similarity of holed polygons, even if they contain different numbers of holes.