Stępień and Klimczak – THE USE OF ANAMORPHIC IMAGES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF TRANSIT MAPS 2016

Description

This paper investigates using anamorphic (variable-scale) images to improve urban transit maps, focusing on Wrocław’s buses, trams and rail. Anamorphosis enlarges areas of high feature density and reduces scale where few features exist, preserving network topology while enhancing legibility. The authors tested raster and vector workflows to produce anamorphic bases for CAD transit maps. Raster fisheye transformations (CorelDraw X6) with one or two focal points improved central detail but caused unacceptable edge distortions. Vector transformations used ArcMap 10 and the MultiFocal Anamorfosis algorithm (Michalski & Tymków), which places grid cells, counts significant objects, computes barycenters and applies a displacement formula. Trials with tram and bus stops and grid sizes (2,000; 1,500; 1,000 m) produced excessive deformation when many points (1,649) were used. A second vector approach using selected points of interest and a 2,000 m grid reduced distortion and proved more promising. The study produced eight models and concludes vector-based anamorphosis, tuned by feature selection and grid size, is more usable for transit-map development.