Quality Control in Digital Terrain Models
Publication: Journal of Surveying Engineering
Volume 131, Issue 4
Abstract
This article is based on digital terrain models (DTMs) and their applications in civil engineering carried out at the Public University of Navarre. One of the drawbacks of the use of these synthetic surfaces is the need to characterize their quality, a very important issue for its economic importance but difficult to determine in a nonempirical manner. We will review the techniques most commonly used to estimate the quality of the models and propose a new method for the control of the quality of DTM in applications for which a high accuracy is required. Among the advantages of this method is that no reference model is needed, and there is a possibility of estimating the errors obtained when using a DTM. The proposed method offers good results and adequately allows one to characterize the roughness of the surfaces evaluated. The sensitivity analysis of the model shows that the volumetric errors are highly sensitive to the density of points sampled, while the height errors remain highly stable.
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Acknowledgments
The work presented in this paper is part of the research developed by the surveying group of the Projects and Rural Engineering Dept. of the Public University of Navarre, in the context of the DTMs. The first author acknowledges the encouragement and support of François Peyret and David Bétaille from the Laboratoire Central des Ponts et Chaussées and of Laurent Polidori of the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement of France.
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© 2005 ASCE.
History
Received: Feb 12, 2004
Accepted: Dec 29, 2004
Published online: Nov 1, 2005
Published in print: Nov 2005
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