Research on a Correction Method to Existing Grid-based Dem

The existing grid-based DEM has several disadvantages in representing the features of real terrain surface, such as peak clipping, channel filling, etc. And abrupt changes in elevation cannot be handled easily and precisely. The inherent size of grid mesh affects the DEM computing, analysis and results. Through the discussion of DEM terrain distortion, the representative types of distortion were analyzed and the possible reasons of distortion were given in this paper. A brief review of the existing DEM data structures was showed and a technique for correcting the existing grid-based DEM was presented to try to solve the problem mentioned above and improve the precision of the terrain surface represented by the DEM. The method developed a new and simple data structure of DEM. It is based on the raster structure and integrated terrain features to the grid cell of existing DEM. Experiment was also made to test the results of correction method. * Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]; Phone: +86-13770632247, +86-25-85898270; Fax: +86-25-85898270