Design of quick computation program on fractal dimension for 2D vector data

Now the fractal dimension of Land Use Types is often calculated by using raster data as the raw data, but quite a number of spatial data is stored as vector data in fact. If these vector data are converted to images to calculate fractal dimension, perhaps some pixels with inaccurate grey value will result from the “GRID” structure of raster data and accordingly reduce the accuracy of calculation. A quick computation program of the fractal dimension for 2D vector data based on Windows platform has been designed by using Visual Csharp in this paper. The results show that the following advantages of this program have been found: (1) higher calculating precision; (2) superior to SPSS software and Microsoft Office Excel at calculation speed, which is particularly prominent when applied to a batch vector data processed; (3) easily operated, expanded and maintained; (4) easily attaching the calculating results to the attribute table of raw 2D vector data and auto-arrange ascendingly or descendingly the fractal dimension value, which could consumedly improve working efficiency; and (5) able to show the fractal dimension of per polygon by thematic map, which will be useful to study spatial distribution characteristics of geometric objects.