Generating and updating multiplicatively weighted Voronoi diagrams for point, line and polygon features in GIS

A Voronoi diagram is an interdisciplinary concept that has been applied to many fields. In geographic information systems (GIS), existing capabilities for generating Voronoi diagrams normally focus on ordinary (not weighted) point (not linear or area) features. For better integration of Voronoi diagram models and GIS, a raster-based approach is developed, and implemented seamlessly as an ArcGIS extension using ArcObjects. In this paper, the methodology and implementation of the extension are described, and examples are provided for ordinary or weighted point, line, and polygon features. Advantages and limitations of the extensions are also discussed. The extension has the following features: (1) it works for point, line, and polygon vector features; (2) it can generate both ordinary and multiplicatively weighted Voronoi diagrams in vector format; (3) it can assign non-spatial attributes of input features to Voronoi cells through spatial joining; and (4) it can produce an ordinary or a weighted Euclidean distance raster dataset for spatial modeling applications. The results can be conveniently combined with other GIS datasets to support both vector-based spatial analysis and raster-based spatial modeling.