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I have a polygon with an arbitrary shape ( assume that it is well-formed with no self intersection, no duplicated points etc), and I need to subdivide the polygon into sub-polygons like how one would define roof on top of a building. How can I do that in any GIS software, or through any open source libraries, or through any algorithm?

The reason why I'm asking this is because for my flat terrain ( with 2D shape unknown obviously), I have to manually enforce artificial gradients at appropriate places, so that the water can flow to the neighboring cells correctly when I am applying D8 implementation to calculate the flow accumulation. So the most intuitive places for sub-division would be the places where roof lines are taking along.

I would be interested to know is there any algorithm that one can use for this, and also is there any C++ open source libraries implementation for this ( I don't want to reinvent the wheel); is GDAL or CGAL or any geometrical algorithm already has this implementation?

Graviton
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  • https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/164863/travel-planning-finding-farthest-points-of-a-polygon – FelixIP Jun 18 '18 at 08:22
  • "Like how one would define roof on top of a building" is rather vague. Can you edit your question to include a definition, or perhaps some illustration, of what you mean here? – csk Jun 18 '18 at 16:59
  • @csk, no I can't define it precisely, but there is no need for me to do so; I've explained why I need such a roof line method further into the question. – Graviton Jun 19 '18 at 01:49

2 Answers2

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You may want to check out this thread. It's a method for deriving the centerline of polygons, and to me the product does look like rooftops.

JamesPatrick
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I think what you're asking for is skeletonisation

See Wikipedia on straight skeleton and topological skeleton

This will give the effect of a sloping roof, even on irregular shaped polygons (I'm not sure how well it works with donuts e.g. atriums). It's based on voronoi meshes.

I haven't tried it myself, but grass has an algorithm called v.voronoi with the -s option to produce skeletons, although it only appears to work with point layers. SAGA has a similar module but for rasters.

see also this question for other options (e.g. i think postgis sf-gcal extension can do this)

Steven Kay
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