4th International Conference on Electrical Engineering (ICEE 2015)

IGEE, Boumerdes, December 13th -15th, 2015

Design of Geographical Information System for

Managing the Urban Road Network
Berrached Nasreddine

Bendouda Malika
Intelligent Systems research Laboratory
Electronic Dept, Electronic Engeneering faculty
University of sciences and technology Mohamed Boudiaf
Oran, Algeria
vrf06bm@gmail.com

Abstract In this paper an efficient methods road network

extraction urban areas is presented. This work seeks the
Geographical Information System GIS update starting from
satellite images and using preexisting vectoriel information
likes maps. The system includes two global modules: data
acquisition module and data analysis module. In the first
module we implement modified F* algorithm and
multispectral extraction methods to extract urban road
network from satellite images in different resolution, we to
extract urban road networks from satellite imagery using
different resolution. The second module is dedicate to update
GIS database, using the extraction result, this can be done by
application of many steps: geo-referencing of the satellite
image, extract road network from map, registration of both
urban road network extracted from the satellite image and the
map of old road network.
Keywords Satellite image, urban road network, GIS,
Registration, Database, map.

I. INTRODUCTION
Cartographic object extraction from digital imagery is a
fundamental operation for GIS update. In this article, we
create a GIS for a geographical object 'road'; to provide road
network database updating. However, the change and the
rapid evolution of the city accelerate the need for updating
and revision of road databases.
In fact, many works on this topic have been presented
[1], but the manual intervention of the operator in
extracting, defining and validating cartographic objects for
GIS update e is still needed.

978-1-4673-6673-1/15/$31.00 2015 IEEE

Intelligent Systems research Laboratory

Electronic Dept, Electronic Engeneering faculty
University of sciences and technology Mohamed Boudiaf
Oran, Algeria

nasr1berrached@yahoo.fr.

Wang have applied directional masks on remote sensing

images at 10 m spatial resolution to detect and extract the
streets represented by thin or thick lines [4]. Haverkamp
proposes a semi-automatic method to extract grid networks
from IKONOS satellite images, it use both the information
contained in the multispectral image and the panchromatic
image [4] the search of optimal path algorithms has been
widely used for the extraction of road network, the
optimization can be realized by dynamic programming [3],
active contours [16], [11] or by Kalman filtering [4].
Further work will lead to the fusion techniques of image
from different sources such as fusion (satellite / radar ...)
[2], or fusion of multispectral image low-resolution into a
panchromatic image high resolution [7]. Lee Sung Yiau uses
MS images to highlight the urban road network, considering
color as the primary discriminator for its shape recognition
[8], in [14] a multi-scale approach exploits is applied to
different resolutions of data, in order to refined road
extraction by separating the scales of the scene and allowing
more efficient extraction procedure at each scale.
II. SYSTEM ARCHITECHTURE
We develop UREGIS (Urban Road Extraction
Geographical Information System), is a set of modules
dedicated to managing the urban road network GIS update;
its aims are:
- Acquisition of initial GIS information.
- Geometrical and topological definition of urban road
network extracted
- Create of the urban geographic database.
-Update, analyze and visualize urban geographic
database.

2015 IEEE

Urban Road Extraction Geographical Information System

Data acquisition module

Given to the complexity of urban areas we have

improved the classical algorithm F * to detect roads
segments in each direction of the search window, as shown
in fig.2.
We tested the algorithm F * modified on low resolution
satellite images, we were able to extract up to 85.58% of
main roads (highway) to their visibility, and get a rate of
40, 08% for secondary roads as shown in fig.3.

-Algorithm F*.
-Multispectral Extraction.

Data analysis module

- Creation of geographical road data base.
-Georefferencement of GIS input data.
-Updating GIS
- Interrogation of the road data base.

Fig. 1. General synoptic of the developed GIS.

III. DATA ACQUISITION MODULE

In this module we digitalize graphical documents. It
allows the input data of the urban road network from the
results of the extraction methods of road network using
remote sensing image, import data from an existing database
like autocade files or numerical maps.
A. THE ALGORITHM F * MODIFIED
The complexity of urban and sub-urban scenes (presence
of trees along the road, a building occludes a part of a road,
roofs might look similar to roads ...) makes the task of
extracting the road network very difficult.
Extraction throughout the global picture is not preferable
because the result may be completely incoherent.
Additionally to their robustness, road tracking methods,
such as dynamic programming algorithms extract local
segments belong the road.
Classical F* algorithm is a dynamic programming
algorithm, from an initial point, detects the segments that
belong to the road by optimizing certain criteria [15].

(a)

(b)

Fig. 3. (a) Original image Riyadh SPOT4 10m resolution, (b) road
network extracted.

This confirms that the low-resolution images cannot

extract the fine structure of the urban road network; hence
high resolution satellite images must be utilized to extract
total structure of urban road network.
B. MULTISPECTRAL EXTRACTION
With the emergence of satellite images with high
resolution surface extraction of the road network becomes
approachable. The aim of this method is to classify the input
image into two main classes, the first is the class of the
object of interest roads and the second the non-road class
[8]. The principle of this method is illustrated by the
following chart:
Original image

Segmentation

Horizontal superior part

Vegetation remove
Starting
point
Horizontal part

Image edge

Color extraction

Segmentation edge based

Paths
found
Horizontal inferior part

Candidates points

Segmentation shape based

Final Road network

Fig. 2. Window research in F* algorithm.

Fig. 4. Princpe of multispectral extraction algorithm.

This method produces a mark improvement in the

accuracy of road network extracted; because it uses the
color information present in the satellite images; to weed out
an object that does not correspond to a road network. This
method is quite successful in improving the accuracy of the
extraction process as compared with the normal grey level
thresholding process, the extraction result is illustrated in
Fig.5.

behaviors or relationships in the real world.

The Fig.6 illustrates the conceptual data model, which
consists of nine entities, such as road, section and
intersection that represent the urban road network.

Fig. 5. Extracted road urban road network of Paris town.

Road completeness and correctness are used to assess

the accuracy of the road extraction [11]. The completeness
is the ratio of correctly extracted road length (length
matched between the extracted and reference data) to the
total road length from the reference image. The highest
value is 1.
The correctness is the ratio of correctly extracted road
length to the total length of the extracted road network. The
optimal value is also 1. With multispectral method, the
completeness value reaches 0.94, and the corresponding
correctness value is 0.85.
These measures are calculated by the equations (1) and

Fig. 6. Conceptual data model of our GIS data base.

After designing the Conceptual Data Model, we define

Logical Data Model. In this module we describe the base to
create. Transcription of the conceptual data model to the
logical data model has generated the following rules as
shown in fig.7.

(2):
Completness

N b _ correct / Nb _ ref

Correctness Nb _ correct / Nb _extract

(1)
(2)

Where: Nb_correct is number of pixels correctly

extracted as road pixels, Nb_rf is number of pixels in the
reference route and Nb_extract represent a total number of
pixels extracted.
IV. DATA ANALYSIS MODULE
A.

DATA BASE CREATION

After extraction of the road network we have designed

the road database, which is the association between an over
simplification of reality and articles describing this reality.
To achieve this mapping, we use the design method
MODUL_R based approach Merise which is well suited to
design a GIS [12], whose main characteristic is the
relational model of reality, thus represent objects and their

Localit (id_localit, Nom, CentreX, CentreY, Gomtrie,

Type)
Tronon (Num_tronon, Nom, nb_Voies, Type,
Direction, AdrDG, AdrDD, AdrFG, AdrFD,vitesse,
id_route*, id_Intersec*)
Route (id_route, Nom, Type, Longueur, Etat)
Intersection (id_intersection , type, positionX,positionY)
Traverser (id_Route, id_Localit, Longueur).
Relier (N Tronon, N Obstacle)
Dlimiter (id_Route, id_Ilot)

.
.
.
Fig. 7. Logical data model of our GIS data base.

B.

- Draw a correlation window centered at each interest

point of image 2 that may match.

DATA BASE UPDATE

To update the road database, we implemented a

registration process to match the road network extracted
from the image satellite with that extracted from the old
map. But satellite image and map must be georeferenced in
order to calculate path and surface.

- Calculate the score of correlation between these

windows.
- Choose the corresponding point P1 the point P2 that
maximize the correlation measure.

To detect changement between the old road network and

the extracted one we propose an automatic approach to
recale the tow road netwok. It principle is described in the
next figure.
Interest points
detection.

Primitives
Extraction

Matching of the interest

points

Matching method

(a)

Compute the translation

rotation and scaling coefficients.

Transformation model
Estimation

Registration of road network

and fusion of images.

Images transformation

(b)

Fig. 8. Scheme descriptive of the proposed registration approach

(c)
Harris corner detector is used to detect interest points in
both images [13]; the matrix M and the response R are
calculated by equations (3) and (4) respectively:

I x2

IxI y

IxI y
R

D et M

Fig. 9.

C. GIS INTERFACE
The role of this module and query the database Road,
where we programmed a set of applications enabling the
display of the road database according to some criteria as
shown in the next figure.

(3)

2
y

kT ra ce M

(a) : Map road network, (b) : road network extracted image,

(c) : registration of the two road networks.

(4)

UREGIS
Short cut

A Tools barre

Scal data base

Such as :

I x2 I y2

Det M

Trace M

Ix Iy

I x2 I y2

BDD Area
analyse

To match all the interest points in the both images, we

used the correlation as a measure of similarity calcutaled by
equation (5).
N

N
I1 x i, y j I1

CC

Nj
N

I1 x i, y j I1
i

Nj

I 2 x ' i, y ' j I 2

N
2 N
i

(5)

N
I 2 x ' i, y ' j I 2
Nj

Zoom
Area

Visualisation

The principle of the mapping is as follows:

- Draw a correlation window centered at an interest point P1
in image 1.

Fig. 10. Geographical data base interrogation interface.

V.

IMPLEMENTATION

We work in the Builder environment with C ++, C ++

Builder is a visual object-oriented programming
environment. Our study focused on the city of Oran, which
is a very complex urban environment due to the complexity
of its structure, We use numerical map of Oran city to create
urban road network GIS, this map is scale of 1/10 000.
VI. CONCLUSION
We have implemented a GIS to manage and manipulate
roads database, our GIS contains several modules from the
data acquisition module to the module map creation,
through other intermediate modules. The key step of any
information system is the acquisition and collection of
information. In our GIS the acquisition data module is based
on the extraction of road network from satellite images
using different resolutions. This extraction has been
thoroughly studied, which required us to apply various
methods due to the complexity of the task, which is linked
to the complex structure of urban areas. After that the result
of extraction is introducing into GIS data bases to update it.

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