Elevation data is a point, line or surface geographically located in the x and y relative to a horizontal datum, that includes a height (z) above or below a known vertical datum. Bathymetry will deal with all offshore elevation data.
- Elevation data will include both raw elevation data and digital elevation models (DEM);
- Spot Heights, points on the earth's surface, of known elevation.
- Contours, lines which represents an imaginary line on the ground joining points of equal elevation.
- Horizontal Control Points, points on the ground, the horizontal position of which has been determined by geodetic survey.
- Digital Elevation Models (DEM) are interpolated representations of a surface. Elevation points are spaced at a regular interval so as to create a grid or lattice. These grids can be directly observed or, more generally, they are computed from more than one of the above mentioned irregular spaced elevations.
- Digital Terrain Models (DTM) are bare earth DEM's representing the terrain They are interpolated using a combination of elevation information and could also be constrained using break lines, such are cliffs, drainage, coast etc.
- Digital Surface Models (DSM) are also DEM's, but they include non-surface objects like trees, buildings etc. So, a DSM = DTM + all non surface objects.
- Triangulated Irregular Network (TIN). A vector data structure that partitions geographic space into contiguous, nonoverlapping triangles. The vertices of each triangle are sample data points
with x, y, and z values. These sample points are connected by lines to form Delaunay triangles.
TINs are used to store and display elevation models.
- Hydrologically enforced Digital Elevation Models (HDEM) represents DEM with drainage enforcement.
The quality of a DEM is a measure of how accurate elevation is at each pixel (absolute accuracy) and how accurately the morphology is represented (relative accuracy). Several factors affect the quality of DEM-derived products: terrain roughness, sampling density (elevation data collection method), grid resolution or pixel size, interpolation algorithm, vertical resolution and terrain analysis algorithm.
