Building generalization using deep learning

Cartographic generalization is a problem, which poses interesting challenges to automation. Whereas plenty of algorithms have been developed for the different sub-problems of generalization (e.g. simplification, displacement, aggregation), there are still cases, which are not generalized adequately or in a satisfactory way. The main problem is the interplay between different operators. In those cases the benchmark is the human operator, who is able to design an aesthetic and correct representation of the physical reality. Deep Learning methods have shown tremendous success for interpretation problems for which algorithmic methods have deficits. A prominent example is the classification and interpretation of images, where deep learning approaches outperform the traditional computer vision methods. In both domains - computer vision and cartography - humans are able to produce a solution; a prerequisite for this is, that there is the possibility to generate many training examples for the different cases. Thus, the idea in this paper is to employ Deep Learning for cartographic generalizations tasks, especially for the task of building generalization. An advantage of this task is the fact that many training data sets are available from given map series. The approach is a first attempt using an existing network. In the paper, the details of the implementation will be reported, together with an in depth analysis of the results. An outlook on future work will be given.