The Convave hull is a technology transversal to a range of different applications that when integrated with geographic information systems for instance, helps to determine the outline of farms and agricultural boundary rivers. When it is integrated into systems of image analysis it helps to detect the outer surface of bones or the delimitation of the area occupied by protected natural species (plants). It can be also used in automatic planning of routes for robots and rescue, analysis of geographical proximity of students to schools, among numerous other applications.

Through the www.concavehull.com website it is commercialized a service that allows the automatic generation of polygons that describe a region, convex or concave, occupied by a set of points in space of two dimensions (2D). The Concave hull is characterized by the generation of concave or convex polygons, allowing thus creating a polygon that best describes the region occupied by a set of points, when compared with other algorithms that generate convex polygons associated with the points considered.
The Concave hull is still characterized by sets of points which spatial density may vary throughout the region they occupy in space.

The automatic processing of satellite images, aerial photographs, geo-referenced, among other applications, usually performed
with the aid of a Geographic Information System (GIS), requires the integration of appropriate algorithms. In the case of the identification of concave polygons, such facilities are not usually available in these tools.
The integration of Concave hull in a GIS allows to define polygons with the rigor required by each application domain, and with any form, whether convex or concave is.
When the registration of patent process was started, this technology attracted countless important stakeholders that led to the launch of this service.

This process of automatic calculation of convex or concave contour of a arbitrary set of points is subject of international patent registration (PCT/IB2008/050849) held by the University of Minho.

_ Partners:

. University of Minho

. Department of Information Systems