Raster to Vector Map Convertion by Irregular Grid of Heights

The accuracy of the naval map representation determines the quality of route construction when solving the problem of automatic control of ships movement in a difficult navigation environment. Using a high-precision raster map requires a large amount of memory to store data. Vector representation of the map is an alternative approach to the problem of storing data about terrain, it allows to store only the data containing the terrain contours. In this paper we implement and research the algorithms which allow to vectorize the raster maps by the set of isoline slices using irregular grid of heights. These algorithms approximate the map with a set of elevation slices, recursively search for nested isolines on the slice, build and optimize contours of the isolines on the slice. We conduct a study that shows a significant reduction in the amount of stored data in vector form compared to raster format. The proposed format for storing map data will be used to represent realistic landscapes in the tasks of building ship routes.