Generating Schematic Transportation Map for Tourists: A Case Study of Guangzhou Metro

Abstract

A schematic map, which is a linear diagram that represents only essential features, is widely used in city transport systems. It can reduce users’ distraction and improve their experience in obtaining navigational information. Guangzhou, as a metropolitan city in China, has a large amount of tourists every day. In this study, the Guangzhou metro system is selected since it has the highest traffic volume in the city. An algorithm is programmed in Python, which is able to preprocess Shapefile data and schematise network data, although the topology relationship cannot be guaranteed. The main processes consist of deleting parallel lines by calculating the Hausdorff distance, simplifying polylines with the Douglas–Peucker algorithm and schematisation. The schematisation can be repeated to get a better layout through evaluation of the cost function. After schematisation, various layouts were viewed by comparison with the original data, and a psychological test was conducted to validate the quality. Although the metro stations and tourism information have not been illustrated in the results, the algorithm is able to generate a schematic map with a similar shape to that of the topographic network. It’s important to note that data cleaning was the major consideration in the project.