Study on Mechanism Resulting in Errors for Conversion from Vector to Raster

Firstly, with ArcGIS software, three pixel coding methods, including Rule of Cell Center (RCC), Rule of Maximum Area (RMA) and Rule of Maximum Combined Area (RMCA), were used to rasterize 1:100,000 land use vector data of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Region in 2018 into 13 resolutions from 50m to 6km. Then, the accuracy loss of the rasterized data products, which were generated with RCC, RMA and RMCA respectively, was calculated with Weighted Average Method (WAM). Finally, Mechanisms of errors for the three coding methods were explored. The results showed that: (a) as a whole, RCC has the best accuracy, followed by RMCA, and RMA has the largest error. (b) The accuracy loss with WAM is actually the loss of data on the boundary of the whole study area. (c) There is a definite correlation between the area accuracy loss of the rasterized area and proportion of grid cells reserved on the boundary line of the study area: the closer the proportion is to 1/2, the smaller the area accuracy loss is, and vice versa. (d) Values of rasterization errors depend on probability of grid cells reserved on the boundary line of vector data. The probability for RCC is 1/2, minimum for RMA and in the middle for RMCA.