I'm working with a SqlGeometry SqlServer DB and am a novice to GIS. I'm tasked with getting the centroid of a series of geometries from C#'s SqlGeometry object. This is fine as it has a GetCentroid method, but it blows up when I try to get the centroid of lines and multilines.
Is averaging the points for lines and multilines a valid method of getting the centroid? If not, why not?
There are a number of definitions to "centroid", but the most common solution for labeling a linear feature involves either the midpoint along the arc or the midpoint of the longest segment on the arc. Averaging the vertices is unlikely to be "on" the feature and will over-emphasize the significance of short segments. If it's acceptable for the label to be "off" the feature, then weighting the midpoints of segments by segment length is more likely to produce a "better" average location.
