An O(nlogn) implementation of the Douglas-Peucker algorithm for line simplification

An important task of the cartographer’s art is to extract features from detailed data and represent them on a simple and readable map. As computers become increasingly involved in automated cartography, efficient algorithms are needed for the tasks of extraction and simplification. Cartographers [1, 6] have identified the line simplification problem aa an important part of representing linear features. Given a polygonal chain, a sequence of vertices V = {vrJ, vi,... , Vn}, the problem is to find a subsequence of vertices that approximates the chain V. We assume that the input chain V has no self-intersections (but not the output). Of The Douglas-Peucker Algorithm Simplification