An evaluation of measures for quantifying map information

A real-time map must not contain too much information. Therefore, we need measures of map information that could be guidelines for the selection of data layers and the real-time generalisation process. In this paper we evaluate measures of the amount of information and the distribution of information. The evaluation is performed by (1) defining measures, (2) implementing the measures, (3) computing the measures for some test maps, and finally (4) comparing the values of the measures with human judgement of the map information. For amount of information, we found that the measures number of objects, number of points and object line length had better correspondence with human judgement than object area. We also found that measures based on the size of Voronoi regions of objects (respectively points) can be used for identifying the distribution of information. The results are based on the testing of only building objects. Future work should extend the test, using all object types.