Volumetric Obscurance as a New Tool to Better Visualize Relief from Digital Elevation Models

The use of digital elevation models (DEMs) has become much more widespread in recent years, thanks to technological developments that facilitate their creation and availability. To exploit these data, a set of processing techniques has been developed to reveal the characteristic structures of the re...

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Published inRemote sensing (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 14; no. 4; p. 941
Main Authors Rolland, Tanguy, Monna, Fabrice, Buoncristiani, Jean François, Magail, Jérôme, Esin, Yury, Bohard, Benjamin, Chateau-Smith, Carmela
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.02.2022
MDPI
Subjects
Age composition
Algorithms
Archaeology
Cognitive science
data processing
digital elevation model (DEM)
Digital Elevation Models
Environmental Sciences
Geomorphology
Historical metallurgy
Historical structures
Humanities and Social Sciences
Life Sciences
Petroglyphs
Photogrammetry
Programming languages
relief mapping
Remote sensing
Visibility
visualization
volumetric approach
Tanzania
visualization
volumetric approach
digital elevation model (DEM)
relief mapping
data processing
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Summary:The use of digital elevation models (DEMs) has become much more widespread in recent years, thanks to technological developments that facilitate their creation and availability. To exploit these data, a set of processing techniques has been developed to reveal the characteristic structures of the relief. This paper presents a new method based on the volumetric approach, and two derivatives. These methods are evaluated on three DEMs at different resolutions and scales: a freely accessible DEM from JAXA DEM covering part of North-East Tanzania, a DEM corresponding to rock art in Siberia, and a DEM of an archaeological Bronze Age funeral structure. Our results show that with the volumetric approach, concave and convex areas are clearly visible, with contrast marking slope breaks, while the overall relief is attenuated. Furthermore, the use of volume reduces the impact of noise, which can occur when processing is based on sky visibility (e.g., sky-view factor or positive openness) or second derivatives. Finally, the volumetric approach allows the implementation of a vertical exaggeration factor, the result of which will enhance the particular characteristics of the landscape. The present study comes with a standalone executable program for Windows, a QGIS plugin, and the scripts written in Python, including GPU compute capability (via CUDA) for faster processing.
ISSN:2072-4292
2072-4292
DOI:10.3390/rs14040941