Local persistent homology based distance between maps

Abstract

We define a topology-based distance metric between road networks embedded in the plane. This distance measure is based on local persistent homology, and employs a local distance signature that enables identification and visualization of local differences between the road networks. This paper is motivated by the need to recognize changes in road networks over time and to assess the quality of different map construction algorithms. One particular challenge is evaluating the results when no ground truth is known. However, we demonstrate that we can overcome this hurdle by using a statistical technique known as the bootstrap.