Generalization

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03-01-2023 01:09 PM
pocalipse
New Contributor III

Hi

I've just participated in the Esri Federal Gis conference and attended the session regarding ArcGIS Defense Mapping. In that session they talked about the generalization tool and I'm kind of wondering if these could be used in the world of maritime data?

The problem in a maritime world talking about generalization is the "always safe" issue, meaning that generalization should always be considered for safeness. So small islands can't disappear but have to be part of larger objects when possible and lines should always expand out, not cutting off anything.

So would the generalization tools in defense mapping be suitable in a maritime database?

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pocalipse
New Contributor III

Thanks, I really appreciate your reply 👍🏻

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Amber_Bethell
New Contributor

The out-of-the-box models in Production Mapping and Defense Mapping may not meet all of the requirements for maritime data but you should be able to use the models to create an initial generalized result and you can build additional models to further refine the results.  

In ArcGIS Pro, the generalization capabilities consist of geoprocessing tools that perform generalization operations like thinning and simplification.  These tools can be combined together into Model Builder models or python scripts to perform multiple generalization operations on a type of feature.  Because these models can be quite complicated to create, a set of generalization models are provided as part of the Production Mapping and Defense Mapping products that contain the most common types of generalization performed on topographic data.  

The generalization models contain a fixed set of operations but are configurable so you can determine which operations to perform on each type of feature.  For example, with islands you can choose to aggregate multiple small islands into a larger island, eliminate the island into surrounding features, and\or delete small islands.  Based on your description you would likely want to perform the aggregate but not the eliminate or delete operations. 

When performing generalization you can use any geoprocessing tools to create your own models.  So if there are additional operations you want to perform on your data, you can build a geoprocessing model or python script and it can be added to the out-of-the-box operations when running generalization.  For example, with 3.1 of Production Mapping there is now a geoprocessing tool to enlarge features, however, it is not used in any of the generalization models.  For islands you could add this tool to a model to enlarge any small islands so that they are large enough to visualize at the output scale.  

While the out-of-the-box models may not meet all of the needs for maritime data, hopefully some of the models will be useful as-is or at least as a tool to learn how to construct models for maritime generalization.

pocalipse
New Contributor III

Thanks, I really appreciate your reply 👍🏻

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GCRice_EsriPS
New Contributor II

Also I know Tamer Nada of UNH did some testing of the ArcGIS solution with maritime data and wrote a couple papers focused on generalizing maritime data with reference to safety of navigation. Some of them are publicly available through a quick Google search. You could consider reaching out to him via LinkedIn or another channel.