Performance comparison among typical open global DEM datasets in the Fenhe River Basin of China

This paper aims to compare the performance of typical open global DEM datasets by using indexes elevation error, relative error and hydrologic network. Taking Fenhe River Basin China as study area, this research made quantitative comparison among four including SRTM data with 1” (SRTM1) 3” (SRTM3) resolutions, ASTER Global at 2nd version (GDEM-v2) ALOS World 3D-30 m (AW3D) data. Through process selection, more than 80,000 ICESat/GLA14 points were used reference data, was computed compared accordingly. Furthermore, analyzed slope values, false ratio index categorically compared. Finally, networks extracted from network acquired visual interpretation remote sensing images. The results show that AW3D has best performance, which is approximate but a little better SRTM1. SRTM3 GDEM-v2 similar, are much worse SRTM1, worst all.