Evaluation and comparison of deterministic and probabilistic interpolation methods for digital elevation model generation

Abstract

Digital elevation models (DEM) are the most common and effective representation of the land surface. Unfortunately, similarly to most digital geographic information, DEM inherently contain errors, which magnitude should be assessed and informed to DEM users. One factor that introduces errors in DEM is the interpolation method and several previous studies have presented findings that disagree among them regarding the suitability of several interpolation methods for DEM generation. With the aim of contributing to this discussion and of improving the understanding of errors introduced in DEM by interpolation methods, in this paper we evaluate and compare the accuracy of DEM generated using both deterministic (IDW, ANUDEM) and probabilistic (OK, KT) interpolation methods. Our results suggest that KT produces more accurate DEM than the other interpolation methods evaluated in this paper and that it produces DEM without systematic errors, which occur in DEM generated using IDW, ANUDEM and OK. These results are consistent with some previous studies, but at the same time disagree with other similar studies.

Keywords

• Modelos Digitales de Elevación (MDE)
• interpolación
• IDW
• ANUDEM
• kriging