Boundary Information Storage , Retrieval , Georeferencing and Visualization

We present an overview of a software system for storing, retrieving, georeferencing and visualizing boundary information obtained from Census 2000 Tiger/Line files, ESRI shape files or from image processing. Boundary information represents a vector data type as opposed to grid-based information denoted as a raster data type. In a Geospatial Information System (GIS) both data types are present. Vector data types are more memory efficient than raster data types for storing boundary information. However, internal organizations of vector data file formats pose a challenge to efficient information retrieval. In this work, we outline the efficiency issues related to boundary storage and boundary information retrieval. Furthermore, we describe several ways for boundary visualization including (1) boundaries alone, (2) boundaries overlaid on a geo-referenced raster data and (3) boundaries’ attributes. This paper also presents boundary processing extensions that are driven by GIS applications.