International Journal of EmergingTrends & Technology in Computer Science(IJETTCS)

Web Site: www.ijettcs.org Email: editor@ijettcs.org

Volume 3, Issue 3, May June 2014 ISSN 2278-6856


Volume 3, Issue 3 May June 2014 Page 115


Abstract: Most of the cities are designed to have certain
direction trend, the roads are extended around certain
directions and always two directions that most probably
occurred by streets. Virtual rotation of region maps is
considered a proper, and sometimes a necessary step, during
the process of network infrastructure design. Rotation is
useful to simplify the involved calculations for finding the
optimal routes. This auto alignment can be useful to make the
the way of applying routing optimization algorithms easy.
In this paper a new algorithm is introduced, it takes the
spatial coordinates of streets nodes from the GIS region
database, allocate the most frequent two perpendicular streets
directions, then determine the required rotation angle to
prepare a map such that the long & parallel streets extend as
horizontal lines in the new map.

Key Words: GIS applications, Maps alignment, Network
Design, Maps Registration.

1. INTRODUCTION
Most probably the alignment of any district of interest is
not along the main coordinate axes of the geographic
north-east system; it may be rotated toward any direction,
as an example see figure (1). The arbitrary alignment of
the studied area may cause many computational
difficulties in some region partitioning stages and in the
stage of allocating the network main branching points,
and also in the stage of selecting the optimal path points.
So, to simplify the computation process a virtual re-
alignment is needed to make the principal alignment of
the area along specific form; such that the longest roads
of the area should be nearly horizontal (i.e., along the
east). For purpose of network planning, the use of auto
virtual alignment will greatly simplify the process of
dividing the area into small sectors; such that each sector
has a central feeding switch (or hup) which feeds services
to the secondary branch hups.


Figure 1 Region real placement and tendency; it is drawn
in Arc Map application
A comprehensive survey we have done to find out the
available tools for auto alignment of GIS maps, as result
we found that the most of the available GIS tools depends
on user interfere to determine the proper angle for
alignment [1] [2] [3]. Also, during the survey we found
many methods have been introduced to auto align raster
image; the principal component analyses based methods
are the most commonly used ones [4] [5].

2. PROPOSED ROTATION ALGORITHM
Most of the planners of district maps draw the relevant
GIS maps according to the available region size,
dimensions, and direction; usually these parameters could
be allocated depending on the four districts corners.
Normally, when the main streets are planned they placed
perpendicular or parallel to each others. So, a proper
simple rotation process is useful to align the streets such
that the longest ones become horizontal and others be
vertical (most of them).
The first step in our developed simple and fast virtual
auto rotation algorithm is the calculation of streets
direction angles, then determining the direction
histogram. After that, the most redundant pair of
perpendicular streets' directions is calculated; this step is
accomplished by scanning all streets' segments records to
find the two perpendicular angles bins that most of the
streets have. As final step, the centroids (1& 2) of these
two angles bins are determined.
To decide which one of these two centroids represent the
required alignment angle; then distribute the streets
segments among the centroids angles (1) and its
perpendicular (2 1+90) according to the closest angle
criterion. Then, choose the angle (1 or 2) that leads to
greater sum of segments lengths as the district direction
angle.
As a final step use the chosen angle () to rotate the area,
as shown in figure (2). Algorithm (1) presents the applied
steps of the rotation algorithm.


A.Original B. After alignment
Figure 2 The region before & after rotation
An Automatic Method for Rotating Urban
Maps to Simplify Area Planning Tasks

Zahraa M. Matrood
1
, Loay E. George
2
and Faleh H. Mahmood
3


1
Baghdad University, College of Science, Al-SalamRoad, Karbala city, Iraq
2
Baghdad University, College of Science, University Complex, Aljaderia, Baghdad, Iraq
3
Baghdad University, College of Science, Remote Sensing Unit, AL-Karada, Baghdad, Iraq
International Journal of EmergingTrends & Technology in Computer Science(IJETTCS)
Web Site: www.ijettcs.org Email: editor@ijettcs.org
Volume 3, Issue 3, May June 2014 ISSN 2278-6856


Volume 3, Issue 3 May June 2014 Page 116


Algorithm (1): Rotation algorithm
Input: segment list
Output: segment list after rotation
Step 1: find minimum x and y for each segment
xmin =SegR(0).x1
ymin =SegR(0).y1
For each segment i
If xmin >SegR(i).x1 Then xmin =SegR(i).x1
If xmin >SegR(i).x2 Then xmin =SegR(i).x2
If ymin >SegR(i).y1 Then ymin =SegR(i).y1
If ymin >SegR(i).y2 Then ymin =SegR(i).y2
Next segment
Step 2: calculate the histogram of angles of all streets
segments
His (-18 To 18)
For each segment i
j =CInt(SegRi.ang / 5)
Hisj =Hisj+1
Next segment
Step 3: Find the most redundant pair of perpendicular
directions
Max=0
For i =-18 To 0
Sm =Hisi+His i +18
If max <Sm Then
j =I : Max =Sm
End if
Next i
Step 4: pass over all segments and find those satisfy:
Ang1 =j * 5 - 2.5
Ang2 =Ang1 +90
For each segment i
If Abs (SegR(i).ang - Ang1) <=7.5 Then
Sm1 =Sm1 +SegR(i).ang
Sm2 =Sm2 +SegR(i).len
N1 =N1 +1
ElseIf Abs (SegR(i).ang - Ang2) <=7.5 Then
Sm3 =Sm2 +SegR(i).ang
Sm4 =Sm4 +SegR(i).len
N2 =N2 +1
End If
Next segment
Step 5: find the angle and length average
If N1 >0 Then Sm1 =Sm1 / N1
Sm2 =Sm2 / N1
End if
If n2 >0 Then Sm3 =Sm3 / n2
Sm4 =Sm4 / n2
End if
Step 6: check which angle average is greater than the
other
If Sm2 >Sm4 Then Ang =Sm1 Else Ang =Sm3
Step 7: shift nodes to minx, minY and rotate with angle
chosen in step 6
D2R =Atn(1) / 45
c =Cos (ang * D2R)
s =Sin (ang * D2R)
For each segment
dx =SegR(i).x1 xmin
dy =SegR(i).y1 - ymin
rSegR(i).x1 =dx * c +dy * s +xmin
rSegR(i).y1 =-dx * s +dy * c +ymin
dx =SegR(i).x2 xmin
dy =SegR(i).y2 ymin
rSegR(i).x2 =dx * c +dy * s +xmin
rSegR(i).y2 =-dx * s +dy * c +ymin
Next segment
End


Figure 3 Region real placement and tendency, it is drawn
in Arc Map application

3. Experimental Results
Figures (3 & 4), present the map of a district that drawn
using ArcMap, this district map is passed through the
proposed virtual auto alignment algorithm and the
attained result is shown figure (5).


Figure 4 Region real placement and tendency; it is drawn
in VB6 form


Figure 5 The region after rotation; it is drawn on VB6
form
International Journal of EmergingTrends & Technology in Computer Science(IJETTCS)
Web Site: www.ijettcs.org Email: editor@ijettcs.org
Volume 3, Issue 3, May June 2014 ISSN 2278-6856


Volume 3, Issue 3 May June 2014 Page 117


4. Conclusions
A tool to convert data from GIS system to Application
development environment (like VB6) should be available;
this tool should migrates data from geographic databases
(shape files, personal geo-database, geo-database) to data
form that easily could be to handled (like text files).
Before implementing the algorithm, the data must be
arranged and make sure that there are no errors during
region planning stage. The proposed algorithm is possible
to apply using any programming language because it
depends on simple equations, and doesnt require high
computational power. The elapsed processing time is a
relatively short, nearly few seconds, for region with area
equal to 3 or 4 square kilometers.

References
[1] Paul Cote, "GIS Manual: GIS Tutorials and
Resources", Harvard University - Graduate School of
Design;
[2] http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/gis/manual/projections/
[3] Amy Jillier, "Manual for Working with ArcGIS 10",
Geographic Information Science, Information and
Support, Michigan Technological University;
[4] http://gis.mtu.edu/?p=490
[5] QGIS Documentation, QGIS 2.2;
[6] http://www.qgis.org/en/docs/index.html#22
[7] Turgay Celik and Kai-Kuang Ma, "Fast object-based
image registration using principal component
analysis for super-resolution imaging", 5th
International Conference on Visual Information
Engineering (VIE 2008), 2008.
[8] Fernando de la Torre and Minh Hoai Nguyen,
"Parameterized Kernel Principal Component
Analysis: Theory and Applications to Supervised and
Unsupervised Image Alignment", Proceedings of
IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern
Recognition, 2008.

Authors
Dr. Loay E. George holds Ph.D in digital
image processing, his main interests in
multimedia & computer vision applications.
He works as a teaching staff member in
Baghdad University / College of Science.

Faleh H. Mahmood obtain the B.Sc, M.Sc.,
and Ph.D. degrees in Physics, Digital Image
Processing and Remote Sensing from
Baghdad University, College of Science,
and Department of Physics in 1990, 2000 and 2008
respectively. Presently, I work as an Assistant Professor
in the Baghdad University, College of Science, Remote
Sensing Unit. My interest in the fields of image
processing and remote sensing.