Digital Terrain Analysis in a GIS Environment.

Concepts and Development

Gyozo Jordan

1. Introduction

Digital models of topographic elevation data form an integral part of geo-

graphic information systems (GIS) and are most often used for (1) hydro-
logical modelling including flood simulation, delineation and analysis of
watersheds and drainage networks, (2) soil erosion and sediment transport
modelling, (3) delineation and study of physiographic units, (4) soil and
ecological studies, (5) geomorphological evaluation of landforms, (6) civil
engineering and military applications such as site and route selection, land-
slide hazard assessment, visibility analysis (viewshed analysis), and (7)
remotely sensed image enhancement for 3D analysis. Groundwater and
climatic models also use digital topographic data as essential components.
Digital elevation models provide an opportunity to characterise quantita-
tively land surface in terms of slope gradient and curvature and yield digi-
tal terrain information not blurred by land cover features which is often a
problem in stereo-aerial photograph interpretation and remotely sensed
image analysis.
Systematic digital terrain analysis is hampered by: (1) the lack of such
studies in literature and (2) the non-uniform description and use of relevant
digital methods in different fields of the Earth Sciences. Essentially identi-
cal methods are often used in these different fields with different names
and for different purposes that makes their application difficult. For exam-
ple, calculated gradients are used as edge enhancement filters in digital
image processing while they have direct geometric implications in geo-
morphometry. Numerical operators have different names in the different
fields of study. For example, Prewitt operators (Prewitt 1970) of image
analysis are called ‘Sharpnack and Akin (1969) gradient filter’ or ‘six-term
quadratic model’ (Evans 1980) in the terrain modelling literature, all being
2 Gyozo Jordan

equal to a least-squares linear trend fit to the nine grid neighbours. Analy-
sis of directional aspect data is crucial in image processing, hydrology, and
climatic studies. Image analysis methods are often applied to grey-scale
terrain models, thus losing the inherent geometric information of digital
terrain models (Simpson and Anders 1992). Accordingly, available soft-
ware designed for the specific needs of each field of study in many cases
does not offer all the operations required for consistent digital terrain
analysis. GIS software can easily perform most of the analyses but some
procedures may be very difficult to implement. Digital terrain analysis re-
quires the use of an integrated system of many analytical and software
tools. The objective of this study is to present some basics for consistent
use of digital terrain analysis methods in a GIS environment.

2. Digital Terrain Analysis in a GIS Environment

GIS is software that processes geo-referenced data and provides four basic
functionalities: (1) data input, (2) data management (database management
system; DBMS), (3) data analysis, and (4) data output (Aronoff, 1989).
Thus, digital terrain modelling in a GIS environment expands from (1)
data input by topographic elevation data acquisition, digitization and geo-
referencing, to (2) management of elevation data in the form of vector data
(random points, survey lines, contour lines and TINs) or raster (grid) data,
to (3) analysis of digital terrain data, and to (4) generation of outputs such
as contour maps and various colour-shaded terrain models. Terrain data
input and output are primarily related to the field of digital cartography
(El-Sheimy et al. 2005). There is no sharp boundary between data man-
agement and data analysis. For example, interpolation from point or con-
tour elevation data to raster elevation model can be regarded as vector-to-
raster transformation between data formats in the DBMS, or as an essential
tool for the analysis of the studied terrain. It is the results of terrain analy-
sis that are used as input into various environmental models and engineer-
ing applications. In a policy support environment these models and appli-
cations are used, in turn, to provide scientific bases for planning and
decision making. Under these conditions the policy making organisation or
its contractors rarely have the time and resources to generate the necessary
terrain models and most often they obtain a terrain model readily available
in a given data format derived from elevation data acquired by a given
method. Based on these considerations, this study focuses on digital terrain
data analysis and data input, output and management are considered only
to the extent that influence the analysis of terrain data.