Automatic Curve Extraction (ACE) Framework

Digitization of the information on meteorological strip charts is a time consuming activity. This is especially true when high-resolution output is needed like 5-minute rainfall sums. In the scope of the Dutch research program 'Climate changes Spatial Planning', KNMI undertook the task of, among others, digitizing hundreds of station years of rainfall strip charts and paper rolls from Dutch stations. The end result is a dataset with long time series of 5-minute resolution rainfall data. To facilitate the digitization, a framework was developped that allows for Automatic Curve Extraction (ACE) from scanned images of strip charts and paper rolls. This report contains the documentation of the ACE framework.