Comparison of Cartosat, ASTER and SRTM DEMs of different terrains

Abstract

In last few years, Digital Elevation Models have established much more imperative due to their diverse applications and utility in the fields of Terrain analyses, in geomorphology etc. Because of their inevitability, DEMs with reasonable accuracy and at higher spatial resolutions are being generated by different organizations worldwide, e.g. Cartosat DEM of Indian Space Research Organization (30m), Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) Global Digital Elevation Model (30m) and SRTM (90m and 30m). In the present study, specific areas have been selected based upon the terrain ruggedness i.e. Himalayan Kanchenjunga area (highly rugged terrain), Lalitpur area of Uttar Pradesh district (Moderately rugged terrain) and Roorkee area of Uttarakhand (almost flat terrain). Followed by a statistical comparison made between Cartosat-DEM (30m), ASTER-GDEM (30m) and SRTM DEM (30m) for the three regions of India. Topographic maps for the three regions have also been used to compare spots height with corresponding values in Cartosat-DEM, ASTER-GDEM and SRTM-DEM.