Variable-Width Buffers in JTS

Inspiration:  this post on the JSTS group (with an image - good job on requirements!)

JTS implementation: in the lab

Code:   Geometry geom = VariableWidthBuffer.buffer( line, 10, 80 );

Output:

SliceGraphs in JEQL

In the interests of increasing blog output, I'm going to experiment with using a terser style in posts where the content is mostly self-explanatory.  Sort of an embedded microblog...

Inspiration: original Population Lines print , this plot from the Line Graphs in R blog post:

Data: SEDAC World Population grid, subsampled

JEQL script

Plot:

Even-distribution Random Point and Polygons in JTS

Recently I fixed the JTS KD-Tree implementation so that it works as advertised with a distance tolerance to provide point snapping.  This gives a fast way to produce random point fields with even distribution (i.e. no points too close together).

First, generate a batch of random points using RandomPointsBuilder.  As is well known, this produces a very "lumpy" distribution of points:

Then, put them in a KD-Tree using a snapping distance tolerance.  Querying all points in the final tree produces a nice even distribution of points:

Using the Concave Hull algorithm available here with the same distance tolerance produces a random polygon with a very pleasing appearance:

I suspect that these kinds of polygons might be useful for generating stress tests for geometric algorithms.

UPDATE: Adding a bit of Bezier Smoothing produces an even cooler-looking polygon: