A recent Announcement of Collaborative Opportunity (AOCO) [1], offers an invitation to interested parties to participate in an exercise to validate the new ASTER Global DEM (GDEM). At the time of this abstract submission, the ASTER GDEM has not yet been released but is expected to be available for validation purposes in early 2009 and for general use later in 2009. The validation program is co-...

Digital Elevation Models (DEM) provided by stereo matching techniques often contain unwanted outliers due to the mismatched points. Detected outliers are candidate for wrong data that may otherwise adversely lead to model misspecification, biased parameter estimation and incorrect results (Maimon and Rokach, 2005). Therefore detection of outlying observations and elimination of them from the da...

A methodological framework for assessing accuracy of the GDEM product is described using four small case studies in areas of variable relief and forect canopy (Booschord in the Netherlands, Calabria in Italy, Fishcamp in USA and Zlatibor in Serbia). Focus is put on evaluating the true accuracy of ASTER GDEM using LiDAR data aggregated to 30 m resolution. Three aspects of accuracy have been eval...

The recent release of worldwide SRTM 1 DEM and AW3D30 adds new members to the open global medium resolution (90–30 m ground spacing) digital elevation models. Together with the previously existing SRTM 3 and ASTER GDEM, their quality is of great interest to various scientific applications. This paper uses 1:50,000 DEM in Hubei Province of China as a reference to assess their vertical accuracy i...

Nowadays the free-access digital elevation models are getting more and more popular. The SRTM and ASTER GDEM databases are the most widespread. However, there are numerous situations and weaknesses we have to take into account during their usage, such as the direction-dependent accuracy and the difference between the digital and the real surfaces. Our goal was to examine these kinds of deficien...

DEM can be generated from a wide range of sources including land surveys, Photogrammetry, and Remote sensing satellites. SRTM 30m by The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), the Global Digital Elevation Model Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission Reflectance Radiometer (ASTER GDEM) global surface model called ALOS Worldview 3D 30 meter (AW3D30) Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) are satellite-b...

There are an increasing number of digital elevation models (DEMs) available worldwide for deriving elevation differences over time, including vertical changes on glaciers. Most of these DEMs are heavily post-processed or merged, so that physical error modelling becomes difficult and statistical error modelling is required instead. We propose a three-step methodological framework for assessing a...

The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) is a 15-channel imaging instrument operating on NASA’s Terra satellite. A joint project between the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration and Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry, ASTER has been acquiring data for 15 years, since March 2000. The archive now contains over 2.8 million scenes; for t...