Accuracy Assessment of Digital Elevation Models Using GPS

Abstract

A Digital Elevation Model (DEM) is a digital representation of ground surface topography or terrain with different accuracies for different application fields. DEM have been applied to a wide range of civil engineering and military planning tasks. DEM is obtained using a number of techniques such as photogrammetry, digitizing, laser scanning, radar interferometry, classical survey and GPS techniques. This paper presents an assessment study of DEM using GPS (Stop&Go) and kinematic techniques comparing with classical survey. The results show that a DEM generated from (Stop&Go) GPS technique has the highest accuracy with a RMS error of 9.70 cm. The RMS error of DEM derived by kinematic GPS is 12.00 cm.