GSoC Network Analysis
Abstract: [1]
1st week report
Hello list,
I have agreed with my mentor, Wolf, to start working on my GSoC project bit earlier so that I can concentrate more on the exams later. Well, earlier means last Saturday and so this is my first week report. Just a short introduction: I am Daniel, 3rd year at Oxford doing Mathematics and Computer Science and some of you may remember me as the student working on GRASS v.generalize module two years ago. My project this year is about extending GRASS network/vector functionality by writing a couple of modules. I have created a wiki page: http://grass.osgeo.org/wiki/GSoC_Network_Analysis, which contains some useful information such as this email and a link to the abstract.
Anyway, after doing boring, but essential, tasks such as downloading and compiling GRASS (I use 6.4 developer branch) I have done more interesting stuff. I wrote a module for computing weakly and strongly connected components. Using this module, I found errors in the standard North Caroline datset. At least, I think that these are errors. For example, if you zoom to [north: 232051.61663403 south: 230521.9965903 east: 640369.10332306 west: 638669.65919416] and let GRASS draw roadsmajor map for you, you get something like this: http://people.ksp.sk/~dano/grass/wcc1.jpg. (colours correspond to different components, which I obtained using my module). Or, the same map, but different location [north: 239329.55684214 south: 238882.80682937 east: 630466.77182694 west: 629997.32746966], and you have another disconnected lines: http://people.ksp.sk/~dano/grass/wcc2.jpg
Then, I have also written a module for computing bridges(edges whose removal disconnects the graph) in the network and found another, probably error. This time, it is in map "railroads". The location is [north: 195851.98992388 south: 187604.09950596 east: 669691.16599023 west: 663129.724274] and the picture is: http://people.ksp.sk/~dano/grass/railroads.jpg. Note that the lines are not connected at the point the red arrow points at. Also, it seems, but I am not completely sure, that there is something wrong with the red segment the green arrow points at. I think, that the segment is not topologically connected to the network at both ends, although, visually, it seems that it is.
Finally, here is a random picture from a module for computing bridges: http://people.ksp.sk/~dano/grass/bridges.jpg. (The data is from streets_wake map). The red edges are bridges. Strictly speaking, the blue edges are bridges as well, but they are not the type of bridge you usually look for/consider important. So I wrote another module that can identify such chains hanging on the network and remove them.
The code should appear shortly in GRASS addons repository.
That is for the last week. I am not currently stuck at anything and I plan to develop another modules over the next week. For exampe, module for computing articulation points as the algorithm is almost the same as for bridges.
Cheers, Daniel