SmartDEM

Imagine a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) as a soft foil hugging every aspect of the terrain. A DEM is a continuous representation of the terrain that can include a surface over all objects upon it. It provides a spatial (3D) physical view of all territories from cities, countries, regions, or even the entire planet Earth including our moon and any other natural satellites or asteroids.

Software to generate a DEM is typically included in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) products. Invariably, information for the DEM production comes from a large single-source dataset and this is how the current market continues to be driven. The traditional solution of big market players is to offer tools for single dataset interpolation and filtering for DEM processing. However, customer demand for higher quality outputs and increasing levels of detail is starting to reveal the limitations of this approach.

Our next-generation solution ensures better quality DEM for various applications through the use of multiple spatial data conflation. The understanding of data conflation proposed here includes, what others can also describe with terms ‘integration’ or ‘fusion’. Spatial data conflation refers to the synthesis of existing data sources of often dissimilar quality to expose their best properties in the final product.

Multi-source spatial data conflation (merging with enrichment) – a novel methodology and computer application for digital elevation model (DEM) production with integration. I have built everything from front-end to back-end and everything in between. The National DEM of Slovenia has been used nationwide (https://eprostor.gov.si/imps/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/4ac9a90e-7694-42eb-870a-c11ef93783c4)) and integrated into the European model (EuroDEM – EuroGeographics) and Google Earth model. The reduced cost of the final product is up to 25 times, realized for the National DEM of Slovenia (from 32 data sources!). This methodology is one of the future trends in geospatial technology.

Basic paper: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13658810412331280130