DEMEDITOR: a tool for editing DEMs

Abstract

A system to visualize and edit digital elevation models based on interferometric synthetic aperture radar data is presented. The visualization and exploration of digital elevation models has been basically done through the use of two-dimensional interfaces. As virtual reality interfaces have proven to offer a high degree of presentation realism and several interaction facilities, they are an appropriate way to visualize and interact with objects such as terrain models. The realistic presentation of the height component of such kind of object is fundamental for its comprehension. Digital elevation models frequently present elevation errors due to problems occurred during imaging process or raw data processing. Several methods have been developed to correct these errors, but a total elimination is not much probably. The visual interpretation of the data, the use of analyse tools to assess this interpretation, and the manual editing of error areas in the digital elevation model compose the error reduction procedure presented by this work. The system offers both a two and three-dimensional interface to visualize and interact with the digital elevation models, and allows the selection of error areas in the terrain in order to remove them. The removed areas can later be interpolated and smoothed.