Morphing of Building Footprints Using a Turning Angle Function

We study the problem of morphing two polygons of building footprints at two different scales. This problem frequently occurs during the continuous zooming of interactive maps. The ground plan of a building footprint on a map has orthogonal characteristics, but traditional morphing methods cannot preserve these geographic characteristics at intermediate scales. We attempt to address this issue by presenting a turning angle function-based morphing model (TAFBM) that can generate polygons at an intermediate scale with an identical turning angle for each side. Thus, the orthogonal characteristics can be preserved during the entire interpolation. A case study demonstrates that the model yields good results when applied to data from a building map at various scales. During the continuous generalization, the orthogonal characteristics and their relationships with the spatial direction and topology are well preserved.