GIS WORKBOOK

Chapter 1 Coordinate System and Map Projection

1-1 Coordinate System
Geospatial data should be geographically referenced ( called georeferenced or geocoded) in a
common coordinate system.

Plane Orthogonal Coordinates

One of the most convenient way of locating points is to use plane orthogonal coordinates with x
(horizontal) and y (vertical) axis as shown in Figure 1.1 (a) and (b). Mostly a right hand system
with the thumb assigned to x and the forefinger to y will be used as shown in Figure 1. 1 (a)
while a left hand system may be used in a specific case as shown in Figure 1.1 (b).

In case of raster data, image coordinates (i, j) with the pixel number in horizontal direction
(column i or pixel i) and the line number in vertical direction (row j or line j) as shown in Figure
1.1 (c) are commonly used.

Polar Coordinates
A polar coordinate system with the angle (q) measured from the polar axis (x axis) and distance
(r) from the pole is used in some cases as shown in Figure 1.2 (a).
In geodetic survey, a point is located with the azimuth (A) measured from the North and the
distance D from a geodetic point as shown in Figure 1.2 (b).

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3D Orthogonal Coordinates
Three dimensional (3D) orthogonal coordinates are also used to locate points with the plane
coordinates (x, y) and height or depth (z) as shown in Figure 1.3 (a) and (b).

In case of locating points on the Earth on the assumption of a sphere, latitude (j ), the angle
measured between the equatorial plane and the point along the meridian and longitude (l ), the
angle measured on the equatorial plane between the meridian of the point and the Greenwich
meridian (or called the central meridian) are used as shown in Figure 1.3 (c). Longitude has
values ranging from 0° (Greenwich, U.K. ) to + 180° (eastly) and from 0° to -180° (westly).

1-2 The Shape of the Earth

The shape of the Earth can be represented by an ellipsoid of rotation (or called a spheroid) with
the lengths of the major semi-axis (a) and the minor semi-axis (b) as shown in Figure 1.4 (a).

The amount of polar flattening (or called ellipticity) is expressed by

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The approximate values of the Earth are;

However, the major and minor semi-axes have been measured precisely by many scientists or
organizations as listed in Table 1.1, that have been adopted in different countries.

The following coordinate systems are used to represent points on the surface of the Earth.
Geodetic Coordinator System (see. Figure 1.4 (b))
Longitude (l) is the angle measured from the Greenwich meridian. Latitude (j) is the angle
measured between the equatorial plane and the normal line of the ellipsoid.

h: ellipsoid height

Geocentric Coordinate System (see Figure 1.4 (c))

Longitude (l) is the same as the Geodetic Coordinates.
Latitude (j) is the angle measured between the center and a point on the surface of the Earth
under assumption that the Earth is approximated as a sphere with radius (R);

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1-3 Map Projection
A map projection is a process of transforming location on the curved surface of the Earth with
the geodetic coordinates (j , l) to planar map coordinates (x, y).
More than 400 difference map projections have been proposed. The map projections are
classified by the following parameters.
- projection plane: perspective, conical, cylindrical
- aspect: normal, transverse, oblique
- property: conformality, equivalence, equidistance

Perspective Projection
Perspective projections are classified based on the projection center or viewpoint as shown in
Figure 1.5. One of the most popular perspective projections is polar stereo projection with the
projection plane tangent to the north or South Pole and the viewpoint at the opposite pole. This
polar stereo projection is used in NOAA GVI (Global Vegetation Index) data for global study.

Conical Projection
Conical projections are classified by the aspect as well as the cone size as shown in Figure 1.6
and Figure 1.7 respectively.

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One of the popular conical projection is Lambert’s conformal conical in which the angle is
conformal with an equal angle and distance in an area of 300 km in East-West and 500 km in
North-South.
The shortest distance is given as a straight line. The projection is used in the world aeronautical
chart of 1:1,000,000 scale.

Cylindrical Projections
Cylindrical projections are classified as in case of conical projections as shown in Figure 1.8 and
Figure 1.9 respectively.

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One of the most popular cylindrical projections is the Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM)
with a transverse axis, secant cylinder and conformality (equal angle). UTM is commonly used
for topographic maps of the world, divided into 60 zones with a width of 6 degree longitude.
Figure 1.10, Figure 1.11 and Figure 1.12 show polar stereo projection, Lambert’s conformal
conical projection and UTM respectively.

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1-4 Coordinate Transformation
Coordinate transformation is to transform a coordinate system (x, y) to another coordinate system
(u, v). The transformation is needed in the following cases;
- to transform different map projections of many GIS data sources to an unified map projection in
a GIS database,
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- to adjust errors which occur at map digitization due to shrinkage or distortion of the map
measured, and
- to produce geo-coded image by so called geometric correction of remote sensing imagery with
geometric errors and distortions.
Coordinate transformation is executed by a selected transformation model (or mathematical
equation), with a set of reference points (or control points), that are selected as tic masks at the
corner points, reseau or ground control points as shown in Figure 1.13.

The following transformations are commonly used in GIS as well as photogrammetry and remote
sensing
Figure 1.14 shows major transformations.
Helmert Transformation (scale, rotation and Quadratic Transformation (parabolic
shift) distortion)

Affine Transformation (skew, scale of x and Perspective Projection (rectification of

y,and shift) aerial photo)

Pseudo Affine Transformation(bi-linear Cubic Transformation(cubic and

distortion) distortion)

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1-5 Distance
Distance is one of the important elements in measuring spatial objects in GIS. Several different
concepts of distance are defined as follows.

Euclidean Distance
Euclidean distance D is the defined as the distance measured along a straight line from point (x1,
y1 ) to point (x2, y2 ) in Cartesian coordinate system (see Figure 1.15 (a).

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 D2 = ( x1 - x2 ) + ( y1- y2 )2
Manhattan Distance
Manhattan distance D is defined as the rectilinear rout measured along parallels to X and Y axes
as shown in Figure 1.15 (b).
D = | x1 - x2| + | y1- y2|
Great Circle Distance
Great circle distance D is defined as distance along the great circle of the spherical Earth surface
from a point (j 1 l 1; latitude and longitude) to another point (j 2 l 2) as shown in Figure 1.15 (c).

where R is the radius of the Earth (R = 6370.3 km) on the assumption that
the Earth is a sphere.
Mahalanobis Distance
Mahalanobis distance D is a normalized distance in the normal distribution from the center ( )
to a point (X) in case of n dimensional normal distribution. Mahalanobis distance is used in the
maximum likelihood method for the classification of multi-spectral satellite images.
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where S: variance-covariance matrix

Time Distance
Time distance is defined as the time required to move from point B to point A by using specific
transportation means.
Figure 1.15 shows major distances.

1-6 Scale, Accuracy and Resolution

Scale of map refers to the ratio of distance on a map over the corresponding distance on the
ground. The scale is represented as 1: M or 1/M, where M is called the scale denominator. The
larger the scale, the more the detail described by the map and with higher accuracy.
In GIS, largest scale of map would be 1/500, that is used in cadastre survey. The smallest scale
would be 1/1,000,000, that is used in the world map and global study.
Accuracy is defined as the closeness of measurements or estimates by computation to true values.
Accuracy is generally represented by standard deviation of errors, that is difference between
measurements and the true value.

where _ : error of measurements

n : number of measurements

In GIS, errors result from the map itself, map digitizing and coordinate transformation, which
will sum up to about 0.5 mm on the map.
In digital GIS database, there is no concept of scale but resolution, expressed as pixel size
(interval or dot per inch), grid cell size or grid interval, ground resolution for satellite images and
so on.
There is a rough relationship between scale and resolution, as follows.

grid interval

where M : scale denominator

Table 1.2 shows the relationships between scale, accuracy and resolution. Height accuracy is
usually one third of the contour interval according to international standard. Most of pixel size of
the scanned raster data will be 200 ~ 400 d.p.i. (dot per inch) or 0.1 mm interval on maps.

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Chapter 2 Interpolation
2-1 Principle of Interpolation
Interpolation is the procedure of estimating the value of properties at unsampled points or areas
using a limited number of sampled observations.
Figure 2.1 and Figure 2.2 show the principle of curve fitting and surface fitting respectively to
interpolate the value at an unsampled point using surrounding sampled points.

In case a single function of the curve or surface fitting is determined, the interpolation is called
global interpolation, and in case different functions are adopted locally and repeatedly in a small
portion of the total area, it is called local interpolation.

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When curve or surface fitting is executed with all the sampled observations, the interpolation is
called exact interpolation, where as in case the fitted curve or surface does not pass through all
the sampled observations because of some expected errors, it is called approximate interpolation.
Approximate interpolation is sometimes used in spatial prediction of trend or representation of
grid cells or unit areas.
Figure 2.3 shows prediction of trend with an approximate curve interpolation and the variation
from the trend. Figure 2.4 shows an example of representation at a grid cell based on majority
rule.

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2-2 Pointwise Interpolation
Pointwise interpolation is used in case the sampled points are not densely located with a limited
influence or continuity in surrounding observations, for example climate observations such as
rainfall and temperature, or ground water level measurements at wells.
Following two methods are commonly used for pointwise interpolations.

Thiessen Polygons
Thiessen polygons can be generated using distance operator as shown in Figure 2.5 (a) which
creates the polygon boundaries as the intersections of radial expansions from the observation
points. This method is also known as Voronoi tessellation.
Pointwise interpolation within a Thiessen polygon is based on nearest neighbor, which estimates
the value as the same value with that of the sampled observations in the area.

Weighted Average
A window of circular shape with the radius of dmax is drawn at a point to be interpolated, so as to
involve six to eight surrounding observed points as shown in Figure 2.6 (a).
Then the value of a point is calculated from the summation of the product of the observed value
zi and weight wi, divided by the summation of the weights.

The weight functions commonly used are the function of distance as follows.

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15
Table 2.1 shows the general properties of the weight function.

2-3 Curve Fitting

Curve fitting is an important type of interpolation in many applications of GIS.Curve fitting is
divided into two categories;
- exact interpolation : a fitted curve passes through all given points
- approximate interpolation : a fitted curve does not always pass through all given points

Exact Interpolation
There are three methods;
- nearest neighbor : the same value as that of the observation is given within the proximal
distance, as shown in Figure 2.7.
- linear interpolation: a piecewise linear function is applied between two adjacent points as
shown in Figure 2.8.

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- cubic interpolation : a third order polynomial is applied between two adjacent points under the
condition that the first and
second order differentials should be continuous. Such a curve is called "spline" (see Figure
2.9).

y = ax3 + bx2 + cx + d
In case, when the curve is not a single function of x as whown in Figure 2.10, an auxilliary
variable u should be introduced as follows.

Approximate Interpolation
There are three methods;
- Moving Average : a window with a range of -d to +d is set to average the observation within
the region as shown in Figure 2.11

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- B spline : a cubic curve is determined by using four adjacent observations as shown in
Figure 2.12

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 - Curve Fitting by Least Square Method : see section 2-5

2-4 Surface Fitting

Surface fitting is widely used for interpolation of points on continuous surfaces such as digital
elevation model (DEM), geoid, climate model (rainfall, temperature, pressure etc.) and so on.
Surface fitting is classified into two categories: surface fitting for regular grid and for random
points.

Surface Fitting for Regular Grid

Following two methods are commonly used.

Bilinear Interpolation
Bilinear function is used to interpolate z using the following formula with respect to normalized
coordinates (u, v) of the original coordinates (x, y) as shown in Figure 2.13.

Bicubic Interpolation
Third order polynomial is used to fit a continuous surface using 4 x 4 = 16 adjacent points as
shown in Figure 2.14.
z is calculated using the following formula.

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Surface Fitting for random Points
Triangular network called as Triangulated Irregular Network (TIN) is applied as shown in Figure
2.15. A triangle forms a plane with straight contour lines. The detail of TIN is described in
Chapter 3.

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2-5 Least Square Method
Least square method (sometimes called regression model) is a statistical approach to estimate an
expected value or function with the highest probability from the observations with random errors.
The highest probability is replaced by minimizing the sum of square of residuals in the least
square method.
Residual is defined as the difference between the observation and an estimated value of a
function.
In GIS, the least square method is widely used for spatial data analysis rather than single use of
interpolation technique.
Least square method is commonly applied for the following two cases in GIS.

Curve Fitting
In case measurements (xi, yi ) are given, the relationship between x and y is estimated by a
function, for example: y = f (x) = ax + b. By minimizing the square sum of residuals, the
unknown parameters a and b will be determined.
Unknown parameters in the case of y = ax+ b are determined as follows.
Observed Equation; AX = B or xi a + b = yi

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Coordinate Transformation
For example, when a digitizer is used to digitize map data on a paper map sheet in the digitizer’s
coordinate system as shown in Figure 2.17 (a), users want to transform it into map coordinate
system as shown in Figure 2.17 (b) using the four tic marks at the corner. The rotation, scale and
shift can be adjusted with only two points mathematically. But two more additional redundant
measurements are strongly recommended because of measurement errors. In such cases the least
square method is applied.

2-6 Interpolation of Image Data<P< photogrammetry.

Figure 2.18 shows the process of geometric correction in which the original image data with
distortions are transformed into geocoded image through resampling and interpolation.
There are three interpolation methods.

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Nearest Neighbor
Resampled image data Q (x, y) is replaced by the nearest original image data Pkl.
Q (x, y) = k = IFIX (x + 0.5), l = IFIX ( y + 0.5)
Bi-linear
Resampled image data Q (u, v) is averaged by the four surrounding original image data as
follows.
Q (u, v) = (1-u)(1-v) Pi,j+1 (1-u) VPij+1 + u (1-v) P i+i,j +uv P i+1, j+1
Where (u, v): normalized coordinates; 0 £ u £ 1, 0 £ v £ 1
Cubic Convolution
Cubic convolution is an image enhancement technique to stretch the contrast and sharpen the
edges using the following spatial filter as shown in Figure 2.19 (c).

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Resampled image data are computed using 4 x 4 = 16 surrounding original image data as shown
in Figure 2.19 (d).

Chapter 3 Digital Terrain Model (DTM)

3-1 DEM and DTM
A DEM (digital elevation model) is digital representation of topographic surface with the
elevation or ground height above any geodetic datum. Various types of DEM are already
described in 2-8 and Figure 2.11 of Chapter 2, Volume 1 as well as in 2-4 and Figure 2.13 ~2.15
of Chapter 2, Volume 2 including grid cell surface, TIN (triangulated irregular network), contour
lines and profile.
Figure 3.1 shows three major DEMs that are widely used GIS.

A DTM (digital terrain model) is digital representation of terrain features including elevation,
slope, aspect, drainage and other terrain attributes. Usually a DTM is derived from a DEM or
elevation data. In this book, a DEM refers to a model with elevation data in digital format by
which elevation at an arbitrary location in the area can be interpolated, while a DTM refers to
terrain features in digital format, that can be derived from the elevation data.
Figure 3.2 shows several terrain features including the following DTMs.

Slope and Aspect

Drainage network
Catchment area
Shading
Shadow
Slope stability

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3-2 Triangulated Irregular Network (TIN)
Triangulated irregular network or TIN is a DEM with a network of triangles at randomly located
terrain points. Irregular spaced sample points are measured with more points in areas of rough
terrain and fewer in smooth terrain. These sample points are connected by lines to form triangles
under Delaunay criterion. A circle drawn through three points of the triangle contains no other
points as shown in Figure 3.3. Such triangle is called a Delaunay triangle.

Delaunay triangles can be created from Thiessen polygons (see Figure 2.5) in such a way that
two vertices are connected to form the Delaunay triangle if their Thiessen polygons share an edge
as shown in Figure 3.4.

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There are three data structures for storing TIN model (see Figure 3.5 and Table 3.1)

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Triangle -based structure (see Table 3.1 (a)): efficient for slope analysis
Triangle ID
Three node IDs and coordinates
Neighbors of triangle

Point-based structure (see Table 3.1 (b)): efficient for contouring and other traversing
Point ID
Coordinates
Neighbors of point

Side-based structure (see Table 3.1 (C)): also efficient for contouring
Point file with ID and coordinates
Triangle file with ID and and three point IDs
Side file with ID, two point IDs and neighbor triangle (left and right)
Contouring of TINs is based on the following procedure. (see Figure 3.6)
step 1: find the intersect of contour and a side
step 2: assign the "reference point" with the symbol r to the vertex above the contour height and
the "sub-point" with the symbol
s to the vertex below the contour height.
Step 3: shift over to the transversing to find the third vertex in the triangle by checking whether it
is a reference point (r) or sub-point (s).
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3-3 Generation of Contour Lines
Contour lines are one of the terrain features which represent the relief of the terrain with the same
height.
There are two types of contour lines in visualizing GIS data; vector line drawing and raster
image.
Vector Line Drawing
In case when the terrain points are given in grid, the simplest method is to divide the square cell
into two triangles mechanically as shown in Figure 3.6 a and b. However such mechanical
division will cause some inconveniences in smoothness of the contour lines. Figure 3.7 shows
strategic division, which makes triangles depending on the slope.

In case when the terrain points are given randomly, TINs will be created as described in 3-2 (see
Figure 3.6).
Raster Image
Contour image with painted contour terraces, belts or lines instead of vector lines will be
generated in raster form.
In case of grid, highly densed subgrid points will be generated and the interpolated height values,
which are simply sliced into contour interval are assigned to the corresponding color as shown in
Figure 3.8 (a). In case of irregularly spaced points, two-step interpolation, that is coarse grid and

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then dense subgrid will be applied as shown in Figure 3.8 (b). The procedure is known as
densification.

3-4 Interpolation of Elevation from Contours

Digital elevation model (DEM) is very often generated by measuring terrain points along contour
lines using a digitizer. DEM with contour points should be provided with an algorithm
interpolate elevation at arbitrary points.
There are several interpolation methods as follows.

Profile Method
A profile passing through the point to be interpolated will be generated and linear or spline curve
applied, as shown in Figure 3.9 (a). However, sometimes improper profiles as shown in Figure
3.10 (a) are introduced. In case of spline curve, transition areas from steep to gentle slope will be
a problem of wave shape profile.

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Proportional Distance Method
According to distance to two adjacent contour lines, as shown in Figure 3.9 (b), the elevation is
interpolated proportionally with respect to the distance ratio. However a point in an island
contour, as shown in Figure 3.10 (b), would be a problem.

Window Method
A circular window is set up around a point to be interpolated as shown in Figure 3.9 (c) and
adjacent terrain points are used to interpolate the value using second order or third order
polynomials.
The interpolation accuracy is better than other methods, but searching of adjacent points within
the window is time consuming.

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TIN Method
TINs are generated using terrain points along contour lines. The interpolation is very easy but
TINs within an island, as shown in Figure 3.10 (c), would be a problem.
Buffering based on proportional method with additional independent terrain points will be the
best interpolation method.

3-5 Automated Generation of DEM

Automated generation of DEM is achieved by photogrammetric methods based on stereo aerial
photography and satellite stereo imagery.
The principle of aerial photography and satellite stereo imagery is the same, in using the theory
of parallax of a stereo pair as show in Figure 3.11.

Parallax is defined as difference between left and right photographs or image coordinates. The
higher the elevation is, the bigger the parallax is. If the parallax is constant, equal elevation or
contour lines will be produced.
Determination of three dimensional coordinates of terrain points is achieved by searching the
corresponding points called conjugate points on the image planes of left and right stereopair.
Intersection of two corresponding 3D rays will give the 3D coordinates of terrain points. 3D rays
are generated by photogrammetric geometry, called colinearity equation that connects lens of
camera (X0, Y0, Z0 image point )(x, y) and terrain point )(X, Y Z) as follows.

where c: focal length of camera

where , j and are rotation angle of camera around Z, Y and X axis respectively
Automated generation of DEM is achieved by automatic searching of conjugate points on stereo
pair, called image matching or stereo matching.
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Image matching is usually executed in two steps.
step 1: Resampling along epipolar lines as shown in Figure 3.12, because conjugate points are
located on epipolar lines theoretically.

step 2: Image correlation between fixed window of n x n pixels on the left image and moving
window of the same size on the right image is maximized to determine the conjugate point as
shown in Figure 3.13.

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3-6 Orthoimage Generation
Once DEM is given, orthoimage can be generated automatically from rasterized image data of
aerial photograph based on central projection.
There are two procedures as follows.

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Orthoimage from Stereo Matched DEM
In case of stereo matching, the left image is fixed as regularly spaced grid, while the right image
will be irregularly spaced grid because of the terrain relief. The product, that is DEM, is
accordingly based on irregularly spaced grid on the ground. Therefore resampling and
interpolation should be executed to convert it to regularly spaced grid on the ground, as shown in
Figure 3.14.

Orthoimage from Regularly Spaced DEM

Some areas will have regularly spaced DEM, possibly produced from the existing topographic
maps. In such cases, regularly spaced DEM or three dimensional coordinates (X, Y, Z) can be
projected on the image plane as shown in Figure 3.15 The projected grid will be irregularly
spaced grid, which must be interpolated to form regularly spaced image data file.
Any image based on other geometry such as mechanical scanner, pushbroom scanner, radar etc.
can be also converted to orthoimage using the same principle.

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3-7 Extraction of Terrain Information
Terrain information or topographic features can be extracted from DEM.
The following terrain information are useful for various applications of spatial analysis in GIS.

Slope and Aspect

The steepest slope(s) and the direction from the east (q) can be computed from 3 x 3 as shown in
Figure 3.16. The aspect that is, the slope faced to azimuth is 180° opposite to the direction of q
(see Figure 3.15).

Convex and Concave

Convex and concave of the terrain shape are represented by the second order differentials, that is
computed by Laplacian operator (see Figure 3.17). Convex is positive Laplacian while concave is
negative.

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Surface Specific points
+ is assigned if the height of the central point is higher than the one of the eight neighbors and - if
lower. A peak can be detected if all the eight neighbors are lower as shown in Figure 3.18 (a),
while a pit is formed if all the eight neighbors are higher as shown in Figure 3.18 (b). A pass can
be extracted if the + and - alternate around the central point with at least two complete cycle as
shown in the example of Figure 3.17 (c) and (d).

Drainage Network and Watershed

The lowest point out of the eight neighbors is compared with the height of the central point to
determine the flow direction as shown in Figure 3.18 (a).
Accumulated count of the flow pass at a point will give the catchment area or watershed as
shown in Figure 3.18 (b).

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Hill Shading
The effect of hill shading on the assumption of an ideally diffused reflecting surface (called
Lambertian surface) can be computed as follows.
Relative shading = cos q
where q: angle between incident light vector s and surface normal n as shown in Figure 3.19.

For human psychological recognition of relief effect, the effect of hill shading is performed with
the incident light of 45 elevation angle from the North West, which results in brighter (larger cos
q ) North West face surface and darker (smaller cos q ) at South East face surface. The detail is
described in 3-8.
Various extracted terrain information are demonstrated in the front pages

3-8 Shade and Shadow

Shade is defined as reduced reflection depending on the angle between the terrain surface and the
incident light such as the sun.
The effect of hill shading is based on the assumption that the terrain is Lambertian surface as
explained in 3-7.
Shadow is projected areas that the incident light cannot reach because of visual hindrance of
objects on terrain relief as shown in Figure 3.20.

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Computation of Hill Shading
Hill shading = |cos q | = |nxsx + nysy+ nzsz |£ 1.0
Where q : angle between surface normal vector and incident light vector (see Figure 3.19) normal
vector of terrain surface

Usually and are given - 45 (NW) and 45 respectively

Shadow Algorithm
Usually the incident light is regarded as the sun with the solar zenith angle (90-b) and the
azimuth angle measured from the south, positive to the east.
The shadow algorithm to determine whether the central point z (see Figure 3.15 (a) is sun lit or is
in sun shadow is given as follows;
Step 1: According to the sun azimuth with respect to the eight zones as shown in Figure 3.22 (a),
the resultant height H with the weight p at the corner points and (1-p) at the side points is
computed for comparing the height from the central point Z5 (see Figure 3.22 (b)).

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H = pZm + (1-p)Zn p, m and n are given in Figure 3.22 (a).
Step 2: If the following equation is true, the central point is in shadow (see Figure 3.22 (c))

where D : grid interval, b : sun elevation angle.

Step 3: If the central point is assigned to be in shadow, Z5 is replaced by the following value and
repeat the above procedures to other neighboring points.

Chapter 4 Spatial Abalysis

4-1 What is Spatial Analysis?
The most important function of GIS is to enable the analysis of the spatial data and their
attributes for decision support.
Spatial analysis is done to answer questions about the real world including the present situation
of specific areas and features, the change in situation, the trends, the evaluation of capability or
possibility using overlay technique and/or modeling and prediction. Therefore spatial analysis
ranges from simple arithmetic and logical operation to complicated model analysis.
Spatial analysis is categorized as follows.
Query: retrieval of attribute data without altering the existing data by means of arithmetic and
logical operations.
Reclassification: reclassification of attribute data by dissolving a part of the boundaries and
merging into new reclassified polygons.

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Coverage Rebuilding: rebuilding of the spatial data and the topology by "update", "erase",
"clip", "split", "join" or "append".
Overlay: Overlaying of more than two layers, including rebuilding topology of themerged
points, lines and polygons and operations on the merged attributes for suitability study, risk
management and potential evaluation.
Connectivity Analysis: analysis of connectivity between points, lines and polygon in terms of
distance, area, travel time, optimum paths etc. Proximity analysis by buffering, seek analysis of
optimum paths, network analysis, etc. are included.
Figure 4.1 shows examples of spatial analysis.

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4-2 Query
Query is to retrieve the attribute data without altering the existing data according to specifications
given by the operator.
The specifications include the following three items, given usually in Standard Query Language
(SQL).
SELECT: attribute name (s)
FROM: table
WHERE: condition statement
The conditional statement is represented by the following three types of operator.

relational: >, <, =, ³, £

Arithmetic: +, -, x, ¸
Boolean (logical): AND, OR, NOT, XOR (exclusive OR)
The Boolean operators are used to combine more than two conditions as shown in Figure 4.2.

The Boolean operators are based on 0 and 1; 0 if the attributes do not meet the condition and 1 if
they do as shown in Figure 4.2.
The Boolean operators are based on 0 and 1; 0 if the attribute do not meet the condition and 1 if
they do as shown in Figure 4.3.

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AND: multiply
OR: add (2 is reclassified to 1)
NOT: subtract (-1 is reclassified to 0)
XOR: (add)- (multiply)

4-3 Reclassification
Reclassification is to reassign new thematic values or codes to units of spatial feature, which will
result in merging polygons.
A set of "reclassify attributes", "dissolve the boundaries" and "merge the polygons" are used
frequently in aggregating area objects, as already shown in Figure 4.1 (b).
Reclassification is executed in the following cases.
Generalization: reassignment of existing data into smaller number of classes. Generalization
will result in a reduction of the level of detail.
Ranking: valuation of attributes based on an evaluation model or table specified by
Reselection :selection of features to be kept and removal of unselected features.
Figure 4.4 shows examples of the above three cases
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4-4 Coverage Rebuilding
Coverage rebuilding is a boundary operation to create new coverages that are identified and
selected by users.
Boundary operations include the following six commands.
- Clip: to identify and preserve features within the boundary of interest specified by users. It is
called a "cookie cutter".

43
- Erase: to erase features inside the boundary while preserving features outside the boundary.
- Update : to replace features within the boundary by cutting out the current polygons and
pasting in the updated polygons.
- Split: to create new coverages by clipping geographic features with divided borders.
- Append: to merge the same feature classes of points and lines from the adjacent coverages.
- Map Join: to join the adjacent polygon features into a single coverage and to rebuild to
topology. It is called mosaicking.
Figure 4.5 shows the concept of coverage rebuilding.

44
4-5 Overlay of Raster Data
Overlay of raster data with more than two layers is rather easier as compared with overlay of
vector data, because it does not include any topological operation but only pixel by pixel
operations.
Generally there are two methods of raster-based overlay.
Weighting point method: basically two layers with the values of P1 and P2 respectively are
overlaid with the weight of w1 and w2 respectively as follows.
P = w1 P1 + w2 P2
where w1 + w2 = 1.0
The weighting point method is only available when the attributes have numerical values which
can be operated arithmetically.
Ranking method: at first the attributes of the two layers are categorized into five ranks as
excellent (5), better (4), good (3), poor (2), and bad (1) before a specific purpose of overlay. Then
the two different layers of A and B are overlaid by following one of the three ranking tables as
shown in Table 4.1.

Minimum Ranking
Lower rank is taken as the new rank of the overlaid pixel as the safety rule.

Multiplication Ranking
Two ranks are multiplied because of more influential effect rather than additional effect.

Selective Ranking
Experts can set up combined ranks depending on professional experience.
For practical purposes, a model of overlay with many layers and the hierarchical structure should
be built by users as shown in Figure 4.6.

45
4-6 Overlay of Vector Data
Overlay of vector data is a little bit complicated because it must update the topological tables of
spatial relationships between points, lines and polygons.
Overlay of vector data results in the creation of new line and area objects with additional
intersections or nodes, that need topological overlay.
There are three types of vector overlay.
point in polygon overlay: points are overlaid on polygon map as shown in Figure 4.7 (a).
Topology of point in polygon is "is contained in" relationship. Point topology is a new attribute
of polygon for each point.

46
line on polygon overlay: lines are overlaid on polygon map with broken line objects as shown in
Figure 4.7 (b). Topology of line on polygon is "is contained in" relationship. Line topology is the
attribute of old line ID and containing area ID.
polygon on polygon overlay: two layers of area objectives are overlaid resulting in new
polygons and intersections as shown in Figure 4.7 (c). The number of new polygons are usually
larger than that of the original polygons. Polygon topology is a list of original polygon IDs.

47
4-7 Connectivity Analysis
Connectivity analysis is to analyze the connectivity between points, lines and areas in terms of
distance, area, travel time, optimum path etc.
Connectivity analysis consists of the following analyses.
Proximity Analysis: proximity analysis is measurement of distances from points, lines and
boundaries of polygons. One of the most popular proximity analysis is based on "buffering", by
which a buffer can be generated around a point, line and area with a given distance as shown in
Figure 4.8. Buffering is easier to generate for raster data than for vector data.

Proximity analysis is not always based on distance but also time. For example, proximity analysis
based on access time or travel time will give the distribution of time zones indicating the time to
reach a certain point.
Figure 4.9 shows walking distance in time (contour lines of every 10 minutes) to the railway
station.

Network Analysis: network analysis includes determination of optimum paths using specified
decision rules. The decision rules are likely based on minimum time or distance, maximum
correlation occurrence or capacity and so on.
Figure 4.10 shows two examples of optimum paths based on minimum distance and time
respectively.

48
4-8 Shape Analysis and Measurement
Shape analysis and measurement are very important to analyze the shape of area objects in GIS.
The following parameters are computed from vector data.

Area:
where xn+1 = x1, yn+1 + y1

Perimeter:
Centroid (Center of Gravity) (see Figure 4.11)

where A : the area of the polygon

The above parameters of area and the centroid can be computed easily from raster data by simply
summing the number of pixels of the polygon and averaging the x and y coordinates respectively.

49
The perimeters can be computed by counting the chain codes around the boundary of the
polygon.
The following parameters indicating the shape of the polygon are also used widely in the shape
analysis as shown in Figure 4.12.

Horizontal maximum chord: CHORD H

Vertical maximum chord: CHORD V
Horizontal Feret’s Diameter: FERE H
Vertical Feret’s Diameter: FERE V
Maximum Length: MAXLING
Breadth: BR’DTH
Orientation: q
The following shape factors are also used for shape analysis as shown in Figure 4.13.

Roundness Factor:

Unevenness:

Flatness:

50
Chapter 5 Digital Image Processing
5-1 Flow of Digital Image Processing
Digital image processing is required for the following cases in GIS.
- Integration of remote sensing and GIS, particularly with satellite imagery of Landsat, SPOT,
JERS-1, ERS-1, Radarsat, IRS
etc.
- Automated digitization from rasterized map data using scanners
- Computer mapping with color output in raster format
- Visualization in three dimensional bird’s eye view
- Editing of image database
Digital image processing includes the following procedures, as shown in Figure 5.1.

Image input: to acquire digital image data by scanning analog films or maps. Satellite imagery is
provided in computer compatible tape (CCT) or CD-ROM.
Preprocessing: two procedures of radiometric correction and geometric correction are required.
Image Transformation: two procedures of image enhancement and feature extraction will be
implemented depending on the specific purposes as shown in Figure 5.2

51
Classification: thematic maps such as land cover/land use, soil, forest, geology etc. will be
produced.
Image output: two products of analog image out put and digital image database will be the result
of digital image processing.

5-2 Radiometric Correction

Radiometric is a pre-processing technique to reconstruct physically calibrated values by
correcting the spectral distortions caused by sensors, sun angle, topography and the atmosphere
as shown in Figure 5.3.

Radiometric correction is classified into two types; absolute and relative correction.
Absolute correction: Correct radiance or reflectance should be measured or converted by using
the sensor calibration data, the sun angle and view angle, atmospheric models and ground truth
data. The incident energy input to sensors as shown in Figure 5.4 should be analyzed correctively
52
by radiometric correction. However it cannot be applied in most applications, therefore the
relative correction is applied because the atmospheric model is so complicated and the exact
measurement of atmospheric condition is difficult.

Relative Correction: Relative correction is to normalize multi-temporal data taken on different

dates to a selected reference data at specific time.
The following techniques will be typical.
- Adjustment of average and standard deviation values.
- Conversion to normalized index: for example the normalized difference vegetation index
(NDVI).

- Histogram matching: the histograms per band and/or per sensor are calculated and the
cumulative histogram with cut-offs at
1% and 99% will be relatively adjusted to the reference histogram as shown in Figure 5.5.
- Least square method: linear function of y = ax + b is determined, where y is reference data and
x is data to be normalized.

53
5-3 Geometric Correction
Geometric correction is to correct the geometric distortions; internal and external distortions as
shown in Figure 5.6.

internal distortions: caused by sensor, such as lens distortion, misarrangement of detectors,

variation of sampling rate etc.
external distortions: caused by external parameters other than sensor, including variation of
attitude and position of platform, earth curvature, topographic relief etc.
Geometric correction is made according to the following steps.
step 1: Data input of uncorrected image data
step 2: Selection of geometric correction method and transformation equation depending on the
sensor geometry and the estimated types of geometric distortions
step 3: Determination of transformation parameters using ground control points (GCP) (see
Figure 5.7)

54
step 4: Resampling and interpolation ( see 2.6, Chapter 2)
step 5: Output georeference image, known as geo-coded image
There are three types of geometric correction.
System correction: geometric correction using the geometry of the sensor with sensor
calibration data and attitude/positioning measurements. But this is not enough to produce geo-
coded image with high accuracy.
Mapping transformation: determination of transformation function, usually the second of third
order polynomials to transform image to map coordinate system based only on ground control
points (see Figure 5.7).
Combined method: at the first stage, system correction is adopted to avoid major systematic
distortions and then mapping transformation with simpler functions such as affine or pseudo-
affine is applied with fewer number of GCPs.

5-4 Image Enhancement

Image enhancement is conversion of the original imagery to a better understandable level in
spectral quality for feature extraction or image interpretation.
The following techniques are typical in image enhancement.
Gray scale conversion (see Figure 5.8.)
Contrast stretch (linear), fold conversion, saw conversion etc. are involved.

55
Histogram conversion (see Figure 5.9.)
The histogram of the original image is converted to other types of histogram as specified by
users. Histogram equalization with flat histogram or linear cumulative histogram and histogram
normalization with normalized histogram are popular.

Color composition
Color composition is the assignment of three primary colors; red (R), green (G) and blue (B) to
three selected bands from multispectral bands usually available for satellite remote sensing image
data.
Table 5.1 shows several color compositions and their characteristics.

Color composition is demonstrated in the front pages of this book.

56
Color Conversion
Though R, G and B are primary colors with more convenience for computer processing, three
color elements of hue (H), intensity (I) and saturation (S) are more easily understood by human
visual sense. Color conversion between RGB and HIS color system will be useful to obtain better
color quality or variety for interpretation. Multi-sensor fusion, for example, with optical multi-
spectral bands and another sensor’s black and white image such as SAR (synthetic aperture
radar) or high resolution panchromatic band is implemented by replacing I (intensity) by B/W
band after color conversion from RGB (only with optical multi-bands) to HIS.

5-5 Spatial Filtering

Spatial filtering is commonly used for the following purposes.
to restore imagery by avoiding noises
to enhance the imagery for better interpretation
to extract features such as edges and lineaments
There are two methods;
Filtering in the domain of image space

Generally local convolution with a window operator of n ´ n matrix is used. Table 5.2 shows
several typical 3 x 3 window operators and their effects.

57
Sobel, Laplacian and Highpass filters are useful to detect or extract linear features and edges.
Mean and Median filters are required to avoid high frequency noises, for example in the images
of water surface with subtle tone change.

Filtering in the domain of spatial frequency

The Fourier transformation is conventionally used to convert from image space domain to spatial
domain of which frequency is controlled by low pass, high pass and band pass filters. After such
frequency domain filtering, image will reconstructed by using an inverse Fourier transformation.
Low pass filters will cut off high frequency to allow the output of only low frequency image,
while high pass filters will cut off low frequency noises such as stripe noise or shading.

58
As the Fourier transformation will not be able to localize the frequency domain filtering, the
Wavelet function has become more useful to detect particularly edges, because it enables to
select an optimum window size locally.
Examples of images applied by various filters are shown in the front pages of this book.

5-6 Feature Extraction

Feature extraction is the operation to extract various image features for identifying or interpreting
meaningful physical objects from images.
Features are classified into three types.
Spectral features: color, tone, ratio, spectral index etc. Principle components and normalized
vegetation index are widely used.
The first and second principle components computed from satellite multi-spectral scanner data
such as Landsat TM will give "brightness" and "greenness" respectively.
Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) is often used for vegetation classification.

Geometric features: edges, linearments etc.

Spatial filtering of edge detection is commonly used to extract linear features such as roads,
geological linearments, boundaries of agricultural fields etc.
Generally spatial filtering (see 5-5) is applied as follows.
Step 1: smoothing filter such as mean or median is applied to avoid high frequency noises.
Step 2: edge detection filter such as Sobel, Laplacian or Highpass is applied to detect edges.
Step 3: line edges are detected by thinning and sometimes edge closing.
Textural features: pattern, homogeneity, spatial frequency, etc.
Though many computer approaches have been tried, human pattern recognition is much better
than the computer results.
Table 5.3 summarizes major operations of feature extraction.

59
5-7 Classification Methods
Computer assisted classification of multispectral imagery in remote sensing is useful for thematic
mapping of land use, vegetation, soil, geology etc.
Classification methods are classfied into two categories.
Supervised classification: classification with the use of ground truth data in the form of sample
sets. Maximum likelihood classifier is one of the typical supervised classification methods.
Unsupervised classification: classification with only spectral features without use of ground
truth data. Clustering is an unsupervised classification in which a group of the spectral values
will regrouped into a few clusters with spectral similarity.
The following classification methods are widely used depending on the spectral characteristics
and availability of ground truth data as shown in Figure 5.10.

60
Rationing: classification between vegetation and non-vegetation is possible.
Box classifier: very easy to apply level slicing but accuracy is not very high.
Discriminant function: useful in the case when the number of classes is not many.
Clustering: unsupervised classifier with spectral similarity or distance between clusters.
Minimum distance method: several statistical distance measures such as Euclidan,
Mahalanobis, Bhattacharya and Jefrey-Matsushita distance are used to determine the class.

61
Maximum likelihood classifier: see 5-8
Knowledge-based classification including decision tree classifier will be specified as
classification model by users.

5-8 Maximum Likelihood Classifier

Maximum likelihood classifier is one of the most popular methods for thematic mapping with
satellite multispectral imagery.
An unknown pixel X with multispectral values (n bands) will be classified into the class (k) that
has the maximum likelihood
{ max Lk (X) }.
The likelihood function is given as follows on the assumption that the ground truth data of class k
will form the Gaussian (normal) distribution (see Figure 5.11).

62
where:

: mean vector of the ground truth data in class k

: Variance-covariance matrix of K class produced from the ground truth data

: determinant of Sk
For practical computation, the above likelihood is converted to the discriminant function in the
form of logarithm.
Gk (X) = In |Sk| + d2k

where : d2k =
Instead of maximum Lk (X), class k that makes Gk (X) minimum is searched for among the
classes.
The maximum likelihood classifier is popular because of its robustness and simplicity. But there
will be some errors in the results if the number of sample data is not sufficient, the distributions
of the population does not follow the Gaussian distribution and/or the classes have much overlap
in their distribution resulting in poor Separability.

Chapter 6 Visualization of Geospatial Data

6-1 Graphic Variables
Graphic representation of spatial data or maps, thematic data, tables and network with geographic
reference and topology is very important to communicate geospatial data and the results of
spatial analysis to all users.
Graphic representation in GIS will be implemented in the form of graphs, maps and images with
XY plotters, dot printers, color monitors, color plotters etc. based on the knowledges of
cartography, computer graphics, color theory, semiology and psychology.
Following graphic variables are used to display quantity, order, difference or similarity.
Location: geographic location and spatial relation of points, lines and areas are displayed in 2D
space or map.
Size: Size of symbols and thickness of line represent quantitative difference. Physical difference
does not coincide with psychological impression.
Density: density, intensity or gray scale is used to represent order and difference. Density or
spacing of dot pattern or screen mesh should be carefully selected for the optimum gray scaling.

63
Texture: cyclic or repeated pattern of data, lines or symbols will represent difference as well as
similarity.
Color: hue (H), intensity (I) and saturation (S) are aesthetically selected.
Orientation: directional pattern with hatching will represent difference as well as similarity.
Symbol: form of symbols will represent similarity of class or group.
Figure 6.1 shows the schematic concept of graphic representation.

64
6-2 Gray Scaling
In case of black and white graphs or images gray scaling with different density of black ink,
black dots and black screen mesh should be carefully designed to represent density difference
better.
Psychological perception of the gray scale is not proportional to the physical difference.
Table 6.1 and Figure 6.2 show the ratio of black area with respect intensity based on
psychological perception.

In case of dot map or bit map, users should design dot patterns to generate the gray scale by
assigning either 0 (white) or 1 (black) to n x n dot matrix.
One should note the following special knowledges about the psychological effect.
a. homogeneous pattern with regularly spaced dot pattern will make the impression of continuous
tone or density rather than texture.

65
b. discrete data patterns with specially recognized forms, symbols and/or directional lines will
make the stronger impression of texture rather than continuous tone.
c. horizontal and vertical pattern in squarely spaced dots (0-90 degree), will make more static and
stable vision of the dot structure, while obliquely cross patterns of 45-135 degree will give
human eye some sort of dynamic confusion in its visual field, which results in more tonal
impression. In designing gray scale, horizontal and vertical patterns should be alternatively
assigned with obliquely cross patterns in order to make visual difference between neighbor
classes.
Figure 6.3 shows example of 4x4 dot pattern for density and textural representation.

Figure 6.4 shows the dot map with use of 4 x 4 dot patterns shown in Figure 6.3.

6-3 Color Conversion between RGB and HIS

While color output by computer is based on three primary colors of red (R), green (G) and blue
(B) and their mixture depending on bits or gray scale, human visual sense of color will rely on
hue (H), intensity (I) and color purity or saturation (S), the relationship that has been already
established with the Munsell color system, one of the most popular color appearance systems in
the world.

66
The Munsell color system as shown in Figure 6.5 consists of a hue ring with forty colors 11
intensity levels, from 0 (black) to 10 (white) and saturation ranging differently from low (mixed;
0~2) to high (pure; 10~20) depending on the hue and intensity. Any color in the Munsell color
system is identified with a combination of HIS, for example 2.5 R 6/4, that is 2.5R (H), 6(I) and
4(S).

The Munsell color samples are available in the commercial market or publications.
When users want to change the brightness or intensity of a certain color, it would be really
difficult to change RGB combination directly, but it is very easy to change only I of HIS if RGB
is converted to HIS.
Color conversation between RGB and HIS is physically established, though there are several HIS
color space systems such as cube, cone, hexagon and double hexagon color space, which are a
little different from the Munsell color system.
Figure 6.6 show the relationship between RGB and HIS color space.

Table 6.2 shows the algorithm of the conversion from RGM to HIS and from HIS to RGB with
the range of H (0, 60), I (0, 1) and S (0, 1); R (0, 1), G (0, 1), B (0, 1) for the hexagon color
space, where H = 0 or 60 (Red), H = 10 (Yellow), H = 20 (Green), H = 30 (Cyan), H = 40 (Blue),
H= 50 (Magenta).
67
6-4 Graphic Representation of Attributes
Attributes in GIS are usually given in the form of relational tables. The attributes are classified
into three categories.
class: difference and sometimes similarity should be represented by difference of color, tone and
texture.
quantity: number, length, size, density, area, volume, ratio etc. should have proper graphic forms
with respect to the physical unit.
spatial relation: order, connectivity, flow, paths, network etc. will be represented in a form of
flow chart, arrow vector map, dendrograph etc.
Most of statistical graphs are related to class and quantity which can be displayed in various
types of graphs such as bar, column, belt and circle graphs as shown in Figure 6.7 the statistics
shown in Table 6.3. Additional graphic decorations using shade, texture, pictures, color etc. is
most recommendable for producing impressive output.

Thematic maps are the representations of attributes or clases with respect to the georeferential
relation.
68
Several graphic representations are possible depending on the characteristics of attributes as
follows.
color map with 5~20 color codes
dot map with 5 ~10 dot patterns
texture map with 5~10 texture patterns
contour map for continuous values
profile map for continuous values along profiles
statistical map with various types of graph
pictomap for symbolic representation
3D map for easier understanding (bird’s eye view, prism map etc.)

6-5 Color Map

Visualization using color is now available with color monitor or color printer connected to a
computer. However to select color codes of R, G, B for color output is not easy to produce a
beautiful and meaningful color image.
The objective of color map is categorized into the following two types.

Representation of similarity
There are two types;
1. Numerical values of all positive or all negative in a certain order. Elevation or ground height
on the land is usually all positive. Water depth is all negative. Such values will be represented
continuously by similar color codes, particularly by intensity or brightness.
2. Numerical values with plus and minus or over and under the average. Temperature is an
example. Red color will be used for higher values while blue color for lower values. The average
will be yellow or green color.

Representation of separability
Different color codes will be better used to enhance the difference of attributes, for example land
use, soil, geology, vegetation etc. To select more than twenty colors would be so difficult to
identify the color difference on the color image. About ten colors would be recommendable.
Because in GIS many letters and lines will be added on the color map, the brightness of color
should be rather high. In most case, different hues with almost equal intensity and saturation
would be a better color combination on the color map.
Table 6.4 shows R, G, B color codes of three color pallets for similarity and two color pallets for
separability visualizations.

69
6-6 Relief Map
Relief map is the representation of height variation with three dimensional structure. There are
several techniques to produce relief maps based on psychological effect. The basic idea is that
human eye will reorganize the three dimensional senses or distance of depth if there is shade or
shadow projected by an illumination with the azimuth of north west (or from left upper) and the
elevation of 45 degree as explained in 3-8 in this book.
Following techniques are used in many parts of GIS applications.
Contour map with shade: thickness of contour lines of southeast faced slope is increased,
which results in the relief effect.
Hill shading with hatched lines: traditional cartographic representation which is manually
produced by professional cartographers.
Prism map: a kind of bird’s eye view with constant height with respect to the polygon.
70
Shaded image: hill shading effect of cosine of angle between normal vector of the surface and
the incident light.
Stereoscopic view: 3D vision can be seen stereoscopically with a pair of stereo images which
have horizontal parallaxes depending on the height or depth distance.
Figure 6.8 shows some examples of relief map.

71
 Glossary
Accuracy
The closeness of measurement or estimates to the true value. Accuracy is normally represented
by the standard deviation of errors.
A/D
Conversion from analog to digital.

Affine Transformation
A type of linear coordinate transformation to correct shift, scale and skew errors.

AM/FM
Automated mapping and facility management refer to large scale mapping and network analysis
mainly for utilities such as gas pipelines, cables, water supply, sewage etc., using a huge volume
of utility database in link with geocode.

Area
Closed area surrounded with a series of lines or chains. Area is sometimes called polygon.

Aspect
Azimuth that the surface slope faces.

Attributes
Attributes are called sometimes thematic data or non-spatial data. Attributes refer to a defined
characteristic of an entity in the real world. Attributes include nominal, ordinal, numerical,
conditional and other characteristics.
Bilinear interpolation
A method of interpolation in which the resampled data is obtained by averaging the four
surrounding points with a linear function in both x and y directions.
(see Pseudo Affine Transformation)

Bird's Eye view

The oblique projection of the three dimensional terrain or structures, in which the landscape is
looked down obliquely from over the sky.

Boolean Operator
Logical operation with the use of only 0 and 1 to combine more than two conditions. 0 is used if
the attributes do not meet the condition and 1 if they do.
AND (multiply), OR (add), NOT (subtract) and XOR (exclusive OR) are basic Boolean
operators.

Buffering
The process of forming a buffer zone around a point, line or area for a given distance. Buffering
is one of the popular proximity analysis methods.
Centroid
Center of gravity of a polygon.
Chain
A line or a string with topology of chain ID No., start and end No., left and right polygon No.

72
Color Composition
Combination of three primary colors that are assigned to three selected spectral bands. Red, green
and blue (RGB) are used for additive color composition, while yellow, magenta and cyan (YMC)
for subtractive color composition.

Color Ink Jet Recorder

An image output device to produce a raster image with fine color ink dots with the resolution of
200 ~ 400 dpi (dot per inch).

Coordinate Transformation
A mathematical procedure to transform a coordinate system to another coordinate system.

Control Point
Reference point with known coordinates that are used for coordinate transformation or geometric
correction. In remote sensing, GCPs (ground control points) is often used.

Curve Fitting
Generation of a fitted curve which passes through or nearby all given points. Spline curve or B
Spline curve is a popular curve fitting.

Cubic Convolution
An interpolation technique to estimate an image data using the three dimensional convolution
defined by 4x4=16 surrounding pixels in the original image data. Cubic convolution has an effect
of stretching the contrast and sharpness.
D/A
Conversion from digital to analog.
Database
Collection of interrelated data in order to handle and maintain a large amount of data.

Database Model
A model to access the database. There are four database models; hierarchical, network, relational
and object-oriented model.

Data Capture
A series of operations to acquire, transform and edit data into a readable format by computer.

Data Model
A set of guidelines to convert the real world to the digitally represented form consisting
geometric data and attributes. There are vector and raster models.

DBMS
Database Management System provides a number of functions which retrieve, edit, manipulate
and analyze spatial and non-spatial data.

DEM
Digital elevation model by which continuous surface such as terrain surface can be represented.
DEM is used to interpolate elevation at arbitrary location using limited number of three
dimensional terrain points.

Digital Photogrammetry
Photogrammetry with use of digital image data that are rasterized from analog photographs or
acquired directly with digital camera.

Distributed System
Computer system with a server and clients (or terminals), that are connected by network such as
LAN (local area network).

73
Dot Printer
An image output device to produce a raster image with small dots (black and white, or color)
based on elector static theory. The tone or texture of image is produced by dot matrix.

DTM
Digital terrain model is to represent or extract topographic information from the DEM. DTM
includes contour lines, profile, drainage system, slope and aspect, shade and shadow, slope
stability etc.
Editing
A series of operations to update, correct, delete, merge, split etc. to obtain appropriate data or
database for subsequent operations.

Generalization
A technique to reduce the amount of data under the condition to retain the amount of
information. Generalization is used to produce smaller scale maps from large scale map.
Geocentric Coordinate System
A coordinate system to represent three dimensional position on the earth under the assumption
that the earth is approximated as a sphere.

Geo-coded Image
Image which is corrected by matching with geographic coordinate system. Geo-code is usually
represented by latitude and longitude.

Geodetic Coordinate System

A coordinate system to represent three dimensional position on the earth of ellipsoid shape with
longitude (angle measure from the Greenwich Meridian), latitude (angle measured between the
equatorial plane and the normal line of the ellipsoid) and height in the normal line.

Geometric Correction
Correction of geometric distortions involved in the original image, which are caused by sensor
characteristics and geometry, attitude of platform and topography of the earth.

Geospatial Data
Information that identifies the geographic location and characteristics of natural or constructed
features and boundaries on the earth. Statistical data may be included.

GIS
Geographic information system is an information system that used to input, store, retrieve,
manipulate, analyze and output geographically referenced data or geospatial data for supporting
decision making.

GPS
Global positioning system by which three dimensional geographic coordinates are measured with
signals from multiple satellites received by GPS antenna.
Helmert Transformation
A type of coordinate transformation to adjust shift, rotation and scale.

Scale =
rotation angle q : tan q = b/a
shift = (c, d)
74
HIS
Three color elements; Hue, Intensity and Saturation that represent color name of code, brightness
and pureness respectively.

Image Enhancement
Conversion of the original image to a better understandable level in spectral quality for feature
extraction or image interpretation.

Image Processing
Procedures of image input, preprocessing, image transformation, classification and image output
in order to extract useful information from the original image.

INS
Inertia navigation system by which attitudes of three axes; roll, pitch and yaw angle can be
measured and integrated in the three dimensional coordinates with the three axes gyro.

Interpolation
The procedure of estimating the value of properties at unsampled points or areas using a limited
number of sampled observations.
LAN
Local Area Network to connect distributed computer systems using optical fiber or coaxial
cables.
Layer
One of the thematic variables that classify the surface of the earth. Geography can be described
using a number of layers including elevation, land use, soil, geology, vegetation, drainage, roads,
built up areas etc.

Least Square Method

A statistical approach to estimate an expected value or function with the highest probability by
minimizing the sum of square of the residuals (difference between observation and an estimated
value of function).

Line
A line segment connecting two points.
Mahalanobis Distance
A normalized distance of normal distribution from a point (X) to the center ( )

where S: variance - covariance matrix

Mahalanobis distance is used in maximum likelihood classifier.

Manhattan Distance
Rectilinear route paralleling x and y axes.

D = |x1 - x2| + |y1 -y2|

Map Projection
A process of transforming location on the curved surface of the earth to the planar map
coordinates.

Maximum Likelihood Method

One of the most popular classification methods, by which an unknown point is classified into the
class with the maximum likelihood or probability on the assumption that the class forms a
Gaussian distribution.

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Mobile Mapping System
Mapping technique using vehicle borne GPS, digital cameras, INS and computers. GIS data input
at sites will be implemented using the mobile mapping system.

Moving Average
A type of smoothing or interpolation by calculating the average of a window, which will move
continuously in a given range.

Munsell Color System

A color system with hue ring of forty colors based on basic colors of R, Y, G, B and P, intensity
or brightness ranging from 0 to 10 and saturation or pureness ranging from 0 to 10~20. Munsell
color is represented by HIS, for example 2.5R 6/4, that is 2.5R(H), 6(I) and 4(S).
Nearest Neighbor Interpolation
A method of interpolation in which resampled data is replaced by the nearest observations.
Network
Spatial relations of nodes or points which are linked to each other.

Network Analysis
Spatial analysis on connectivity of network including search of optimum paths, access time
analysis etc.

Node
An intersect of more than two lines or strings. Topology of node is node ID. and the coordinates
(x, y).
Object
Representation of real world that is converted to digital form using data model. There are point,
line and area object, that is generally called spatial object.
Object Oriented Database
Database with an object oriented model to build the relationships of geographic objects and the
attributes using a set of operations and rules. The attributes are classified into objects, classes,
super classes etc. that have inheritance relations such as "in a", "part of", "belongs to" etc.

Ortho-image
Image that is transformed into geographic coordinate system or orthogonal coordinate system by
correcting the terrain relief distortions resulting from non-orthogonal geometry of the sensor. In
case of aerial photograph, it is called orthophoto.

OS
Operating System is software to control the operation of the computer programs as well as all
input and output. OS for PCs includes MS-DOS and WINDOWS. OS for workstations includes
UNIX.

Overlay
A technique of spatial analysis to superimpose more than two layers to extract useful
information.
Photogrammetry
Mapping technique with stereo photographs under the support of stereo plotters.
Pixel
Picture cell or pixel refers to minimum element of grid cell.

Point
Pin point geographic location represented by the coordinates (x, y) and the attributes.
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Polygon
Area with topology of polygon ID No. and series of chain No. in clockwise direction.

Pseudo Affine Transformation

A type of coordinate transformation with additional cross term to Affine transformation.

It is sometimes called bilinear function.

Quadtree Model
A type of hierarchical model to access map data by partitioning the map area into four sub-areas
step by step, that is 4, 16, 32 .........in order to access a particular area at high speed.

Queen's move
Eight directions from the center of a window of 3 x 3 matrix with a sequence code number by
which a line or a flow can be represented.
The Queen's move has come from the chess game.

Query
The selective retrieval of attribute data without altering existing data stored in the database.
Rasterization
Conversion from vector to raster data. It is sometimes called vector raster conversion.
Raster Model
A model to represent spatial objects with regularly spaced grid cell in specific sequence. Raster
model has advantages of simple data structure, easiness of overlay, flexible visualization and
automated data capture.

Relational Database
A collection of normalized relations that are given as a set of two dimensional table where each
row corresponds to one element of the relation, and each column contains attributes. The relation
between tables can be connected with common attributes.

Remote Sensing
Art and science of obtaining reliable information about physical objects and the environment
through the process of recording, measuring, interpreting and displaying imagery there of derived
from non-contact sensor systems.

Resampling
Rearrangement of image data in the transformed coordinate system into geo-coded image, using
coordinate transformation and interpolation.
Resampling is essentially used in the geometric correction of remote sensing data.

Resolution
Detailness represented by frequency of signals per unit distance or time.
line pairs per mm.........image resolution
meters on the ground.......ground resolution
dot per inch (dpi).......... dot resolution

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frequency of the pass .......... temporal resolution

Retrieval
Selection or reference of specific spatial data without modifying the geographic location and
spatial features stored in the database. (see Query)

RGB
Three primary colors; Red, Green and Blue in additive color system, such as color TV monitor.
In subtractive color system, Yellow (Y), Magenta (M) and Cyan (C) are primary colors.

Rook's move
Four directions from the center of a window of 3x3 matrix with a sequence code number by
which a line or flow can be represented. The Rook's move has come from the chess game.

Run Length
A raster data structure by which as area object is represented by a set of start pixel No. and
number of pixels of homogeneous attributes with respect to each scan line.
Scale
The ratio of distance on a map over the corresponding distance on the ground. The scale is
represented 1:M or 1/M, where M is called scale denominator. The larger scale is, the more detail
is described in the map with higher accuracy.
Scanner
Device to convert from analog maps or photographs to digital image data in raster format.

Shade
Reduction of reflection from the illuminated light due to the effect of the terrain relief. The shade
is normally calculated as cosine of the angle between the illuminated light and the normal vector
of the terrain surface, on the assumption of an ideal diffuse reflection surface (or Lambertian
surface).

Slope
Ratio or gradient of vertical change over horizontal distance.
It is represented by ratio, degree, denominator, percentage or tangent of angle.

Spatial Analysis
An analysis of the spatial relations between spatial objects and the attributes.
It includes operations of query, reclassification, topology rebuilding, overlay and connectivity
analysis.

Spatial Filtering
Conversion of the original image quality using various filters in order to restore, correct and
enhance imagery and to extract features.

String
Sequence of multiple lines connected to each other represented by series of point coordinates.

Surface Fitting
Generation of a fitted surface or a group of fitted local surfaces to represent the height of given
measurements.
Thematic Map
Map with a focus on a specific theme.
Thematic map includes land use map, soil map, geological map, drainage map, forest map etc.

Thiessen Polygon
Polygons which are created as the intersections of radial expansions from the observation points.
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Distance from a point on the boundary to the adjacent observation points is equal. It is sometimes
called Voronoi tessellation.

TIN
Triangulated irregular network is a DEM by which the terrain surface is represented by a set of
triangular planes.

Topology
Relationships or connectivity between spatial objects including start and end node, sequential
order, left and right side, is within, on line, is nearest to, on border of area etc. Topology is a
relative geometric relation which is not changed by transformation.
UTM
Universal Transverse Mercator, one of the most popular cylindrical map projection, subdivided
into 60 zones with a width of six degrees in longitude. UTM is widely used for topographic map
of 1:25,000 or 1:50,000.

Vectorization
Conversion from raster to vector data, sometimes called raster vector conversion.
Vector model
A model to represent spatial objects with points, lines and/or areas corresponding to the
attributes. Vector model has advantages of precise expression, less data volume, full topology,
fast retrieval and fast conversion.

Window Operator
A matrix operator to execute the convolution. The most popular window operator is 3 x 3 matrix,
including Sobel, Laplacian, Mean, Median, High-pass and Sharpening filters.

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References
1. NCGIA (National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis),
University of California, Santa Barbara
Core Curriculum; "Introduction to GIS" "Technical Issues in GIS", 1990
2. Konecny, Gottfried
Basic Considerations for the Implementation of Spatially Based Information Systems,
Proceeding of Third International Colloquium of LIESMARS, WTUSM, Wuhan, 1994
3. Korte, George B.
The GIS Book, Third Edition
Onward Press, 1993
4. Japan Association of Remote Sensing
Remote Sensing Note, Edited by Shunji Murai
Japan Association of Surveyors, 1993
5. Meijerink, Allard M.J. et al
Introduction to the Use of Geographic Information Systems for Practical Hydrology,
International Institute for Aerospace Survey and Earth Sciences (ITC), ITC Publication
Number 23, Enschede, 1994
6. SIAGE-ALITEC
Geocube, SIAGE, France, 1994
7. Bertin, Jacques
Semiologie Graphique
Mouton, 1967
8. Imhof, Eduard
Kartographische Gelaende-Darstellung
Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1965
9. Harvard University
Mapping Software and Cartographic Data Bases, 1979
10. Murai, Shunji
How to see, take and produce stereoscopic photographs (Japanese version)
Gihodo Publishing Co., Ltd, 1988
11. Murai, Shunji
How to draw graphics (Japanese version)
Asakura Shoten Co., Ltd, 1985

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