@article{bue-sto-16-2d-ijcga, author = {Lucas Moutinho Bueno and Jorge Stolfi}, title = {{3-Colored} Triangulation of {2D} Maps}, month = jul, year = 2016, month = jun, journal = {International Journal of Computational Geometry {\&} Applications}, volume = {26}, number = {2}, pages = {111--133}, doi = {10.1142/S0218195916500060}, abstract = {We describe an algorithm to triangulate a general map on an arbitrary surface in such way that the resulting triangulation is vertex-colorable with three colors. (Three-colorable triangulations can be efficiently represented and manipulated by the GEM data structure of Montagner and Stolfi.) The standard solution to this problem is the barycentric subdivision, which produces $4e-2b$ triangles when applied to a map with $e$ edges, such that $b$ of them are border edges (adjacent to only one face). Our algorithm yields a subdivision with at most $2e-b+2(2-\chi)$ triangles, where $\chi$ is the Euler Characteristic of the surface; or at most $2e-b+2(2-\chi)-n+(2(2-\chi)-b)/(D-2)$ triangles if all $n$ faces of the map have the same degree $D$. Experimental results show that the resulting triangulations have, on the average, significantly fewer triangles than these upper bounds.} }