Cartographic Terrain Modeling in a Three-Dimensional GIS Environment

Abstract

This paper presents a method, called cartographic terrain modeling (CTM), dealing with visualization of geographic data in an interactive, three-dimensional geographic information systems environment using selected digital terrain models, such as the triangular irregular network (TIN). One of the main features of the CTM process, next to the possibility to manipulate terrain models in three-dimensional space, is the capability to include the information of a map layer, of which the contents are represented by chains, into the three-dimensional TIN and visualize the result. The TIN is based on the Delaunay triangulation, which is applied with a conditioned chain segment split algorithm to integrate the map layer. This algorithm is explained, and results are illustrated.