Computational modelling of terrains

An open book about algorithms and methodologies to reconstruct terrains, to manipulate them, and to extract information from them. It covers different representations of terrains (eg TINs, rasters, point clouds, contour lines), discusses different applications (visibility analysis, runoff modelling, etc.), presents techniques to handle large datasets, and discusses related topics such as global elevation models and bathymetric datasets.

The book is currently used for the course Digital terrain modelling (GEO1015) in the MSc Geomatics at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. The course is tailored for MSc students who have already followed an introductory course in GIS and in programming.

Each chapter is a lesson in the course, and each lesson is accompanied by a video introducing the key ideas and/or explaining some parts of the lessons.

Written by Hugo Ledoux, Ken Arroyo Ohori, Ravi Peters, and Maarten Pronk.

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• Extra material
• YouTube videos
• TU Delft course about terrain modelling (GEO1015) (where this book is used as the main reference)

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1. What is a terrain?
2. Acquisition of elevation measurements
3. Global digital elevation models
4. Delaunay triangulations & Voronoi diagrams
5. Spatial interpolation: deterministic methods
6. Spatial interpolation: kriging
7. Conversions between terrain representations
8. Topographic properties and features
9. Visibility queries on terrains
10. Runoff modelling
11. Point cloud processing
12. Handling and processing massive terrains
13. Spatial extent of a set of points
14. Processing bathymetric data to produce hydrographic charts