鉴于矢量地图数据压缩在地形环境仿真、制图综合、GIS等研究中具有重要作用，为此，利用小波变换理论和矢量地图数据的特点，提出了一种用于等高线数据压缩的模型和方法，即首先，基于小波变换的特征，提出了基于小波变换的等高线数据压缩的基本思想；然后，根据等高线数据的小波变换特点，研究了小波变换的边界处理；同时，给出了用于等高线数据压缩的特征点选取方法；并提出了基于小波变换的等高线数据压缩模型；最后，根据提出的压缩模型，对实际等高线数据进行了实验。理论分析和实验结果表明，该方法不仅能保持较高的压缩比，而且能使压缩后的数据保留原来数据的变化趋势，从而较好地反映了原数据的内在特性和规律性。

It is very important to compress vector relief data for the study and application of the terrain environment simulation, cartographic generalization, GIS and so on. Using the theory of wavelet analysis and the characteristics of the vector relief data, in this paper, a model to compress contour data is developed. Firstly, a basic ideal is proposed to compress contour data based on wavelet transformation. Then, the boundary of wavelet transformation is processed by a developed method. And the feature points of contour data are selected according on given rules so that the compressed data can retain the characteristic of original data well. Thus, a model to compress contour data is obtained based on wavelet transformation. Finally, actual contour data are experimented using the developed compression model. The theory analysis and experiments show that the developed model not only obtains the high compression ratio for contour data but also retain the trend and the characteristics of original contour data. The developed method can be used with the widely areas such as digital terrain models, GIS, remote sensing et al.