Workflow to remove gaps between polygons

Question

In a polygon dataset, I have several thousands of features that have gaps mostly at the corner zones (see below). I'd like to remove them but I haven't yet found an appropriate workflow.

I have already tried to use v.clean (bpol, rmdupl, rmarea), however, I get an empty output.

Any ideas on how to fix this?

Answer 1

You can try:

1. Dissolve into one big polygon
2. Delete holes (called Cleaned in the screenshot)
3. Difference this and your polygon layer to create polygons where there were holes
4. Merge the hole polygons with your start layer
5. Select the hole polygons and "Eliminate selected polygons"

Answer 2

I created another workflow for the one from BERA, that gives a similar result.

1.) Add a small buffer distance to create overlaps
2.) Make the overlaps to single polygons
3.) Select the unwanted gaps/overlaps by area ("Add geometry attributes", " Select by attributes")
4.) Merge them by longest border using "Eliminate selected polygons"

I guess this would also account for overlaps not created by the buffer.