Edge Contraction Simplification Based on DEM Terrain

Edge contraction simplification based on DEM terrain algorithm is proposed as a new terrain simplification algorithm which is based on DEM terrain data characteristics. The algorithm introduces the gradient of triangle, and combines with gradient and the length of edges as weight of the vertex to represent the importance of a vertex. By using the vertex weight, we can constrain the region being affected by edge contraction small, which will avoid appearing too large triangle or oversimplification for somewhere of the model. Experimental results show that our algorithm runs fast and is easy to implement.