The course provides an overview of the fundamentals of digital terrain modelling:
- different representations of terrains: TINs, rasters, point clouds, contour lines
- reconstruction of terrains from different sources (lidar, InSAR, photogrammetry, multibeam echosounders)
- spatial interpolation methods
- conversion between different representations
- processing of terrains and point clouds: outlier detection, filtering, segmentation, and identification and classification of objects
- techniques to handle and process massive datasets
- applications, eg runoff modelling, watersheds computations, visibility
At the end of the course, students will be able to:
- describe the pros and cons of different representations of terrains
- explain how elevation datasets can be automatically converted to terrains
- reconstruct and manipulate terrains using with open-source libraries
- analyse how terrains can be useful in different applications related to built environment
- given a specific problem where elevation plays a role (eg visibility or flood modelling), analyse and identify which data and algorithms are needed to solve the problem, and assess the consequences of these choices
