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A form of geographic data in which primitive objects (points, lines, and areas) are represented using coordinates, connected as necessary by straight lines (vectors). Vector representations are commonly seen as alternatives to raster, and geographical information systems can be broadly divided into these two types, although most now have some aspects of both. A vector representation of an area is a polygon, and by extension a representation of a line is termed a polyline. Vector representations often appear more accurate than raster representations, because the latter have fixed spatial resolution determined by the size of each cell, but such accuracy is often illusory, since it fails to reflect the real positional uncertainty of each object. (MG) |
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