A Topological Algorithm for Determining How Road Networks Evolve Over Time

TL;DR

This paper introduces an efficient topological algorithm to analyze and compare road network evolution over time using graph-theoretic properties, applicable across various data sources including maps and databases.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel topological approach for matching and analyzing changes in road networks over time, with proven polynomial-time performance for non-degenerate cases.

Findings

Algorithm runs in polynomial time for non-degenerate networks

Successfully applied to U.S. Census TIGER/Line data

Effectively identifies unchanged, added, and removed road segments

Abstract

We provide an efficient algorithm for determining how a road network has evolved over time, given two snapshot instances from different dates. To allow for such determinations across different databases and even against hand drawn maps, we take a strictly topological approach in this paper, so that we compare road networks based strictly on graph-theoretic properties. Given two road networks of same region from two different dates, our approach allows one to match road network portions that remain intact and also point out added or removed portions. We analyze our algorithm both theoretically, showing that it runs in polynomial time for non-degenerate road networks even though a related problem is NP-complete, and experimentally, using dated road networks from the TIGER/Line archive of the U.S. Census Bureau.