ST_MinimumClearance — Returns the minimum clearance of a geometry, a measure of a geometry's robustness.
float ST_MinimumClearance(
geometry g)
;
It is not uncommon to have a geometry that, while meeting the criteria for validity according to ST_IsValid (polygons) or ST_IsSimple (lines), would become invalid if one of the vertices moved by a slight distance, as can happen during conversion to text-based formats (such as WKT, KML, GML GeoJSON), or binary formats that do not use double-precision floating point coordinates (MapInfo TAB).
A geometry's "minimum clearance" is the smallest distance by which a vertex of the geometry could be moved to produce an invalid geometry. It can be thought of as a quantitative measure of a geometry's robustness, where increasing values of minimum clearance indicate increasing robustness.
If a geometry has a minimum clearance of e
, it can be said that:
No two distinct vertices in the geometry are separated by less than e
.
No vertex is closer than e
to a line segement of which it is not an endpoint.
If no minimum clearance exists for a geometry (for example, a single point, or a multipoint whose points are identical), then ST_MinimumClearance will return Infinity.
Availability: 2.3.0 - requires GEOS >= 3.6.0