High-accuracy surface modelling and its application to DEM generation

Abstract

An innovative method, high-accuracy surface modelling (HASM), is presented, which is based on the fundamental theorem of surfaces. The fundamental theorem of surfaces makes sure that a surface is uniquely defined by the first and second fundamental coefficients. Numerical tests of a Gaussian synthetic surface show that the Root Mean Square Error of the HASM method is much less than the ones of classical methods, such as the Triangulated Irregular Network, Spline, Inverse Distance Weight and Kriging methods. The HASM method gives a solution to the error problem that has long troubled generations of digital elevation models. All the methods for surface modelling are used to simulate a Digital Elevation Map (DEM) of Qian-Yan-Zhou Experimental Station for Red Soil and Hilly Land, which has a great topographical variety. Shaded relief maps of the simulated DEMs are developed to represent the terrain relief of Qian-Yan-Zhou Experimental Station, which shows that simulation results of the HASM method are much better than the ones of classical methods.