Deep learning, which is a dominating technique in artificial intelligence, has completely changed image understanding over the past decade. As a consequence, the sea ice extraction (SIE) problem has reached a new era. We present a comprehensive review of four important aspects of SIE, including algorithms, datasets, applications and future trends. Our review focuses on research published from 2016 to the present, with a specific focus on deep-learning-based approaches in the last five years. We divided all related algorithms into three categories, including the conventional image classification approach, the machine learning-based approach and deep-learning-based methods. We reviewed the accessible ice datasets including SAR-based datasets, the optical-based datasets and others. The applications are presented in four aspects including climate research, navigation, geographic information systems (GIS) production and others. This paper also provides insightful observations and inspiring future research directions.

Residential areas and road networks have a strong geographical correlation. The development of a single geographical feature could destroy the geographical correlation. It is necessary to establish collaborative generalization models suitable for multiple features. However, existing road network generalization methods for mapping purposes do not fully consider residential areas. Compared with road networks, residential areas have a higher priority in cartographic generalization. In this regard, this study proposes a road network generalization method constrained by residential areas. First, the roads and settlements obtained from clustering residential areas were classified. Next, the importance of the settlements was evaluated and certain settlements were selected as the control features. Subsequently, a geographical network with the settlements as the nodes was built, and the traffic paths between adjacent settlements were searched. Finally, redundant paths between the settlements were simplified, and the visual continuity and topological connectivity were checked. The data of a 1:50,000 road network and residential areas were used as the experimental data. The experimental results demonstrated that the proposed method preserves the overall structure and relative density characteristics of the road network, as well as the geographical correlation between the road network and residential areas.

The division of urban functional zones is crucial for understanding urban characteristics and aiding in urban management and planning. Traditional methods, like dividing based on blocks and grids, are insufficient for modern demands. To address this, a knowledge-graph-supported method for building functional category division is proposed. Firstly, the associations between points of interest (POI) and buildings are established using triangulation and buffer zones. Then, a knowledge graph of buildings is constructed through entity and relationship extraction. A functional category classification model supported by the Z-score is designed using the semantic characterizations of surrounding POIs for inference rules. The results demonstrate high accuracy in building functional category division, supporting the refinement and intelligent expression of urban functional zones for urban construction, planning, and management.

Augmented reality (AR) technology enables paper maps to dynamically express three-dimensional geographic information, realizing the fusion of virtual and real information. However, in the current mainstream AR development software, the virtual information usually consists of prefabricated components (prefabs), and the content creation for AR maps heavily relies on manual prefabrication. It leads to repetitive and error-prone prefabrication work, which restricts the design of the dynamic, interactive functions of AR maps. To solve this problem, this paper explored the possibility of automatically generating AR map prefabs using object detection models to establish a data conversion interface from paper maps to AR maps. First, we compared and analyzed various object detection models and selected YOLOv8x to recognize map point symbols. Then, we proposed a method to automatically generate AR map prefabs based on the predicted bounding boxes of the object detection model, which could generate prefabs with corresponding categories and positional information. Finally, we developed an AR map prototype system based on Android mobile devices. We designed an interaction method for information queries in the system to verify the effectiveness of the method proposed in this paper. The validation results indicate that our method can be practically applied to the AR map prefabrication process and can quickly generate AR map prefabs with high information accuracy. It alleviated the repetitive workload established through the manual prefabrication method and had specific feasibility and practicality. Moreover, it could provide solid data support for developing dynamic interactive functions of AR maps.