Recent advances in satellite technologies using to generate the Digital Elevation Model (DEM)

Abstract

Satellite images have been widespread used in many disciplines of remote sensing. Since the early 2000's, the satellite images have been used to produced the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) with more and more increasing importance too. DEMs are a basic material for Geographical Information System (GIS). In recent years, the number and the spatial resolution of the satellites used particularly to generate the DEM have rapidly advanced. In these day, to obtained the DEM, there are varieties of the satellite images that have different spatial, radiometric, spectral and temporal resolutions.The DEM generating using satellite images provide the great facilities when the arriving to some places are troublesome or necessary the DEM for large areas. The DEM producing from the satellite images have considerable advantages in respect to time, money and effort consuming. Therefore, the satellite technologies on this subject have improved considerably over the past few years. The importance of the DEM generating from remotely sensed data have increased due to these rapid and important advances of the satellite technologies in last ten years.At the beginning, while the spatial resolution of the elevation data obtained from the satellite images are 90 meter, today the DEMs are available from the satellite images distributing with 0.50 meter ground sampling distance (GSD) such as Worldview-1 (launched in 2007). In this study, Aster L1A and Cartosat-1 images were used to generated the DEM from satellite data. The spatial resolution of Aster L1A image is 15 meter and the spatial resolution of Cartosat-1 image is 2.5 meter.In these study, the DEMs were produced applying the stereoscopic method using Aster L1A and Cartosat-1 images and researched and estimated recent advances about the DEM generating using satellite technologies in very short term. The DEM with 1:50 000 scaled was generated using Aster L1A image. Also the DEM produced from Cartosat-1 image is 1:10 000 scaled. The DEM obtained from Cartosat-1 stereoscopic data are very high quality. It was obtained the better outcomes in respect to the accuracy and the spatial resolution than the DEM produced from Aster L1A image. The results of the DEM produced using Aster L1A and Cartosat-1 images have indicated too that today, the reached latest point of satellite technologies are very important. The DEMs having high quality and accuracy can be obtained using satellite technologies at short time, effortless and low cost.