This article attempts to describe the role of tessellated models of space within the discipline of geographic information systems(GIS)—a speciality coming largely out of geography and land surveying,where there was a...This article attempts to describe the role of tessellated models of space within the discipline of geographic information systems(GIS)—a speciality coming largely out of geography and land surveying,where there was a strong need to represent information about the land’s surface within a computer system rather than on the original paper maps.We look at some of the basic operations in GIS,including dynamic and kinetic applications.We examine issues of topology and data structures and produce a tessellation model that may be widely applied both to traditional“object”and“field”data types.Based on this framework,it can be argued that tessellation models are fundamental to our understanding and processing of geographical space,and provide a coherent framework for understanding the“space”in which we exist.This first article examines static structures,and a subsequent article looks at“change”—what happens when things move.展开更多
文摘This article attempts to describe the role of tessellated models of space within the discipline of geographic information systems(GIS)—a speciality coming largely out of geography and land surveying,where there was a strong need to represent information about the land’s surface within a computer system rather than on the original paper maps.We look at some of the basic operations in GIS,including dynamic and kinetic applications.We examine issues of topology and data structures and produce a tessellation model that may be widely applied both to traditional“object”and“field”data types.Based on this framework,it can be argued that tessellation models are fundamental to our understanding and processing of geographical space,and provide a coherent framework for understanding the“space”in which we exist.This first article examines static structures,and a subsequent article looks at“change”—what happens when things move.
