GIS Fundamentals, 2nd Edition

Chapter 9

Data Structures for Surfaces

Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 of this book have introduced the main issues involved in the handling of vector and raster data on the computer. Many of the main data structures for handling these two forms of spatial have been described as well as a selection of algorithms for carrying out some fundamental operations. In Chapters 9, 10 and 11, we will consider two types of spatial data which can be represented using either vector or raster data. In the case of surfaces, we will see that raster data structures and algorithms have some advantages over vector, and in the case of networks, the opposite is true.

So far in this book, we have concentrated solely on data structures and algorithms that are suitable ...