Objectives Building aggregation is one of the main contents in map generalization at the micro scale, which is of great significance to map compilation and multi-scale representation of spatial data. In order to maintain the consistency of spatial characteristics, a building aggregation method considering the spatial structure is proposed.

Methods First, based on distance-adaptive Delaunay triangles, the relationships of spatial structure between adjacent buildings are divided into six types. Meanwhile, these spatial structures are summarized as positive bridging type and oblique bridging type according to the bridging surfaces. Then, the bridging area is constructed according to bridging triangles, which are identified by projective overlap lines between adjacent buildings. The rectangular method is applied to the bridging area to maintain the spatial structure relationship. Finally, the calculation of bridging distance between adjacent buildings is put forward for building clustering, which can meet the mapping requirements and cognitive habits.

Results The effectiveness and universality of the proposed method are verified by several experiments.

Conclusions The comparative experiment shows that the proposed method has advantages in maintaining spatial structure characteristics and geometrical characteristics, including area consistency and rectangularity.