This article is centred on analysing the state of the art of the conflation processes applied to geospatial databases (GDBs) from heterogeneous sources. The term conflation is used to describe the procedure for the integration of these different data, and conflation methods play an important role in systems for updating GDBs, derivation of new cartographic products, densification of digital elevation models, automatic features extraction and so on. In this article we define extensively each conflation process, its evaluation measures and its main application problems and present a classification of all conflation processes. Finally, we introduce a bibliography which the reader may find useful to further explore the field. It tries to serve as a starting point and direct the reader to characteristic research in this area.

A methodology for matching bidimensional entities is presented in this paper. The matching is proposed for both area and point features extracted from geographical databases. The procedure used to obtain homologous entities is achieved in a two-step process: The first matching, polygon to polygon matching (inter-element matching), is obtained by means of a genetic algorithm that allows the classifying of area features from two geographical databases. After this, we apply a point to point matching (intra-element matching) based on the comparison of changes in their turning functions. This study shows that genetic algorithms are suitable for matching polygon features even if these features are quite different. Our results show up to 40% of matched polygons with differences in geometrical attributes. With regards to point matching, the vertex from homologous polygons, the function and threshold values proposed in this paper show a useful method for obtaining precise vertex matching.

The general rigorous theory corresponding to double potential step chronoamperometry for a reversible charge transfer reaction in a spherical electrode whose area increases with t^z, where z ≥ 0, is presented. The static mercury drop electrode (z = 0) and the dropping mercury electrode (z = 2/3) are addressed specifically. The explicit equations for the current versus time response assuming unequal diffusion coefficients for the oxidized and reduced species are valid when the product is soluble in both the electrolytic solution and the electrode. Comparisons with previous general treatments in the literature are made. The theory is applied to the detection of amalgamation in RP and DNP techniques.Moreover, in this work we show the origin of errors appearing in some general treatments in the literature, these errors lead to physically meaningless results when amalgamation takes place.