Affordance-based individuation of junctions in Open Street Map

Abstract

We propose an algorithm that can be used to identify automatically the subset of street segments of a road network map that corresponds to a junction. The main idea is to use turn-compliant locomotion affordances, i.e., restricted patterns of supported movement, in order to specify junctions independently of their data representation, and in order to motivate tractable individuation and classification strategies. We argue that common approaches based solely on geometry or topology of the street segment graph are useful but insufficient proxies. They miss certain turn restrictions essential to junctions. From a computational viewpoint, the main challenge of affordance-based individuation of junctions lies in its complex recursive definition. In this paper, we show how Open Street Map data can be interpreted into locomotion affordances, and how the recursive junction definition can be translated into a deterministic algorithm. We evaluate this algorithm by applying it to small map excerpts in order to delineate the contained junctions.