Current Science

Open Access Open Access  Restricted Access Subscription Access

Sink Removal from Digital Elevation Model–A Necessary Evil for Hydrological Analysis


Affiliations
1 Civil Engineering Department, BRCM College of Engineering and Technology, Bahal 127 028, India
2 Agricultural and Food Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur 721 302, India
 

The present study involves a comparative appraisal of three different sink removal algorithms. The publicly available shuttle radar topographic mission (SRTM) digital elevation model (DEM) version 3.0 of 90 m resolution was used as input DEM. Three sink filling algorithms proposed by Jennson and Domingue (JD), Planchon and Darboux (PD), and impact reduction approach by Lindsay were evaluated for their efficiency in removing the sink from SRTM DEM with minimum alteration of original DEM quality. Various primary and secondary parameters were used for comparative assessment. It was found that all the three algorithms altered the originality of the DEM significantly, but to a different extent. It was found that the PD method of sink removal was better than the other two methods studied here. However, the results also substantiated that the hydrologist must take due care to minimize any uncertainty that might arise due to DEM preprocessing.

Keywords

Digital Elevation Model, Hydrological Preprocessing, Sink Filling Algorithms, Terrain Analysis System.
User
Notifications
Font Size

  • Sharma, A., Tiwari, K. and Bhadoria, P., Quality assessment of contour interpolated digital elevation models in a diverse topography. Int. J. Ecol. Dev., 2010, 15, 26–42.

  • Sharma, A., Tiwari, K. and Bhadoria, P., Vertical accuracy of digital elevation model from Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission– a case study. Geocarto Int., 2010, 25(4), 257–267.

  • Garbrecht, J. and Martz, L. W., The assignment of drainage direction over flat surfaces in raster digital elevation models. J. Hydrol., 1997, 193(1–4), 204–213.

  • Babu, G. P., Sreenivas, B., Rafique, F. and Edida, R., Importance of breaching and filling for river network extraction using High Resolution DTM. In Second Space for Hydrology Workshop – Surface Water Storage and Runoff: Modeling, In-Situ data and Remote Sensing, Geneva, Switzerland, 12–14 November 2007; earth.esa.int/hydrospace07/participants/09_08/09_08_PrasadBabu.pdf (accessed on 11 December 2018).

  • Jenson, S. K. and Domingue, J. O., Extracting topographic structure from digital elevation data for geographic information system analysis. Photogramm. Eng. Remote Sens., 1988, 54(11), 1593– 1600.

  • Wang, L. and Liu, H., An efficient method for identifying and filling surface depressions in digital elevation models for hydrologic analysis and modeling. Int. J. Geogr. Inf. Sci., 2006, 20(2), 193– 213.

  • Planchon, O. and Darboux, F., A fast, simple and versatile algorithm to fill the depressions of digital elevation models. Catena, 2002, 46(2–3), 159–176.

  • Lindsay, J. B. and Creed, I. F., Removal of artifact depressions from digital elevation models: Towards a minimum impact approach. Hydrol. Process., 2005, 19(16), 3113–3126.

  • Poggio, L. and Soille, P., Influence of pit removal methods on river network position. Hydrol. Process., 2012, 26(13), 1984–1990.

  • Woodrow, K., Evaluating the effects of DEM properties on the spatial and statistical distribution of hydrological surface attributes. M Sc thesis, University of Guelph, Guelph, 2014.

  • Barnes, R., Lehman, C. and Mulla, D., Priority-flood: An optimal depression-filling and watershed-labeling algorithm for digital elevation models. Comput. Geosci., 2014, 62(1), 117–127.

  • Pathak, K. and Kaushik, P., Analysis of time complexities and accuracy of depression filling algorithms in DEM IOSR. J. Comput. Eng., 2015, 17(3), 26–34.

  • Lidberg, W., Nilsson, M., Lundmark, T. and Ågren, A. M., Evaluating preprocessing methods of digital elevation models for hydrological modeling. Hydrol. Process., 2017, 31, 4660–4668.

  • Wei, H., Zhou, G. and Fu, S., Efficient priority-flood depression filling in raster digital elevation models. Int. J. Digit. Earth, 2019, 12(4), 415–427; doi:10.1080/17538947.2018.1429503.

  • Jarvis, A., Reuter, H. I., Nelson, A. and Guevara, E., Hole-filled seamless SRTM data V3. International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), Cali, Colombia, 2006.

  • Lindsay, J. B., The terrain analysis system: a tool for hydrogeomorphic applications. Hydrol. Process., 2005, 19(5), 1123– 1130.


Abstract Views: 403

PDF Views: 107




  • Sink Removal from Digital Elevation Model–A Necessary Evil for Hydrological Analysis

Abstract Views: 403  |  PDF Views: 107

Authors

Arabinda Sharma
Civil Engineering Department, BRCM College of Engineering and Technology, Bahal 127 028, India
K. N. Tiwari
Agricultural and Food Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur 721 302, India

Abstract


The present study involves a comparative appraisal of three different sink removal algorithms. The publicly available shuttle radar topographic mission (SRTM) digital elevation model (DEM) version 3.0 of 90 m resolution was used as input DEM. Three sink filling algorithms proposed by Jennson and Domingue (JD), Planchon and Darboux (PD), and impact reduction approach by Lindsay were evaluated for their efficiency in removing the sink from SRTM DEM with minimum alteration of original DEM quality. Various primary and secondary parameters were used for comparative assessment. It was found that all the three algorithms altered the originality of the DEM significantly, but to a different extent. It was found that the PD method of sink removal was better than the other two methods studied here. However, the results also substantiated that the hydrologist must take due care to minimize any uncertainty that might arise due to DEM preprocessing.

Keywords


Digital Elevation Model, Hydrological Preprocessing, Sink Filling Algorithms, Terrain Analysis System.

References





DOI: https://doi.org/10.18520/cs%2Fv117%2Fi9%2F1512-1515