Morphological models for the collapse of area features in digital map generalization

'Collapse' is an essential operation for the manipulation of area features in digital data generalization. This operation can be categorized into two types: complete collapse and partial collapse. The former is composed of another two types: area-to-point and area-to-line collapse. In this paper, a set of algebraic models built upon the operators in mathematical morphology is described for the area-to-line collapse and partial collapse operations. For the area-to-line collapse operation, a modified skeleton algorithm is presented. For the partial collapse operation, a procedure is designed which consists of a set of operations, i.e., the skeletonization, separation of areal and linear parts, simplification of areas and an overlay operation. These models are tested using real map data sets.