Research on a Buffer Algorithm Based on Region-Merging of Buffered Geometry Components and Its Parallel Optimization

  • FAN Junfu MA Ting ZHOU Chenghu JI Min ZHOU Yuke XU Tao
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  • 1. Institute of Geographic and Nature Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences
    2. Shandong University of Technology
    3. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences
    4. Shan Dong University of Science and Technology

Received date: 2013-12-06

  Revised date: 2014-06-23

  Online published: 2014-09-25

Abstract

Abstract: The double-sided parallel line method and the geometry rasterization-based dilation method have been extensively used for buffer generation in spatial analysis. The former involves a series of complex numerical operations and may not be suitable for parallelized computation; the latter inevitably introduces precision problems and computation complexity. In this paper, we proposed a parallel buffer construction algorithm based on region-merging of buffered geometry components in association with the message passing interface (MPI) parallel programming model. Several optimization strategies were studied for the parallel buffer algorithm. The performances of both serial and parallel buffer algorithms were comparably analyzed. Three performance bottlenecks which significantly impact the algorithm efficiency were identified: area merging operation, task load balance strategy and MPI inter-process results merging methods. Corresponding optimization approaches involving tree-like area and inter-process results merging and the parallel task partition based on vertex number oriented parallel task partition strategy were suggested to overcome these bottlenecks. Several experiments were carried out to examine the performance efficiency of the optimized parallel algorithm. The estimation results suggested that our method could provide high performance and processing ability for buffer construction in a parallel environment. Our method could provide insights into the parallelization of spatial analysis algorithm.

Cite this article

FAN Junfu MA Ting ZHOU Chenghu JI Min ZHOU Yuke XU Tao . Research on a Buffer Algorithm Based on Region-Merging of Buffered Geometry Components and Its Parallel Optimization[J]. Acta Geodaetica et Cartographica Sinica, 2014 , 43(9) : 969 -975 . DOI: 10.13485/j.cnki.11-2089.2014.0122

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