The impact of horizontal errors on the accuracy of freely available Digital Elevation Models (DEMs)

Abstract

ABSTRACT Many freely available global or quasi-global digital elevation model (DEM) datasets, including Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) World 3 Dimensions (3D) 30 m DEM (AW3D30 DEM), Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer DEM (ASTER DEM), Shuttle Radar Topography Mission DEM (SRTM DEM), Multiple-Error-Removed-Improved-Terrain DEM (MERIT DEM), and TerraSAR-X add-on for Digital Elevation Measurement (TanDEM-X) DEM (TanDEM-X DEM), are extremely useful products for many applications, so it is necessary to make a reasonable analysis of the quality of these DEMs. The quality of these DEMs is affected by both horizontal and vertical errors. However, most related researches have paid little attention to the effects of horizontal errors on the vertical accuracy of DEMs. Herein, after analysing the horizontal errors caused in the data acquisition process from optical stereo pairs and interferometry, experiments were proposed to assess the horizontal errors in DEMs. Then, we used the high accuracy digital surface model (DSM) of the Changsha area generated from the ZiYuan-3 triplet stereos to investigate the impact of horizontal errors on the accuracy of the five freely available DEMs. The subpixel level horizontal errors of the five DEMs were calculated, showing that the TanDEM-X DEM has systematic offsets and the other four DEMs have strip-like geometric errors. All the DEMs, except ASTER DEM, attained an accuracy increase of approximately 10% after the horizontal errors were removed. In mountainous areas, correcting the horizontal errors could eliminate the elevation errors caused by the imaging geometry of the optical camera and radar system. Generally, AW3D30 DEM has the best performance in terms of overall elevation accuracy and geometric accuracy after eliminating horizontal errors, and so it can have wide-ranging applications. These findings demonstrate the importance of removing horizontal errors to improve the elevation accuracy in practical applications using these global freely available DEMs.