  Point-feature label placement (PFLP) is a major area of interest within the
filed of automated cartography, geographic information systems (GIS), and
computer graphics. The objective of a label placement problem is to assign a
label to each point feature so as to avoid conflicts, considering the
cartographic conventions. According to computational complexity analysis, the
labeling problem has been shown to be NP-Hard. It is also very challenging to
find a computationally efficient algorithm that is intended to be used for both
static and dynamic map labeling. In this paper, we propose a heuristic method
that first fills the free space of the map with rectangular shape labels like a
grid and then matches the corresponding point feature with the nearest label.
The performance of the proposed algorithm was evaluated through empirical tests
with different data set sizes. The results show that our algorithm based on
grid placement of labels is a useful, fast and practical solution for automated
map labeling.
