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by Stratoscope 3616 days ago
Watch out for over-generalization, especially when the thing you're generalizing is a geographic shape.

(In GIS, "generalization" is what you might also call "simplification" - reducing the vertex count of the borders so you have less data to deal with.)

Take Scarborough Reef (aka Scarborough Shoal) for example: #6 on the list with a Roundness of 0.9. It only has four vertices, a simple squarish quadrilateral. Is that what it is really shaped like? You be the judge:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Scarborough_Shoal_La...

1 comments

Yes, I know, that is a pity. I didn't simplify anything though, I use all the vertices that the dataset gives me, the dataset is the problem here.