2/15/2019 Building DEM in ArcGIS with contour data

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Let’s discuss building a DEM from digitized elevation contours of the topographic map
Remote Sensing
using ArcGIS.
Mapping
  Mobile Technologies
Spatial Analysis
Our task

We obtained digitized elevation contours of topographic plans of 1: 1000 scale covering TAGS
Kharkiv Lesopark (“forest park”) and some surrounding areas. We were eager to create a
gis 20 digest 15 дайджест 14
digital elevation model based on these materials. During the task we got familiar with
available methods and tools of DEM creation, selected and learned some of them. This uav 13 бпла 12 події 12
experience is partly described in the article.
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Source contours

Why?

Let’s digress a bit and discuss why we wanted to have a DEM and for what territory we
made it.

The answer to the rst part can be found, for example, in posts about DEM at our blog: 1,
2, 3.

In our case, we wanted to bene t from the topo maps we obtained and practise in DEM
creation, to create hillshaded terrain and to use it on the map.

The territory for processing is fairly small, about 81 km2, and measuring up to 9×15 km
at its widest, but it has very irregular shape. It covers Kharkiv forest park, Sarzhyn Yar
park and some surrounding areas.

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Extent overlaid on the OSM

Our area of interest has weakly rugged flat terrain, the absolute elevation excess reaches
about 110 meters, the deepest valleys – up to 80 meters. Most of the territory is
occupied by flat watershed plains. If we consider, for example, DEMs with global
coverage (STRM, ASTER GDEM), they do not provide suf cient detail to be used in that
territory and to be viewed at maximum zoom levels (18-19, 1:2300 ~ 1:1130). We just
needed to display hillshaded terrain as an integral part of the map even at the largest
zoom levels to achieve the effect user’s immersing in the map even in this flat area. Input
data with a vertical dissection of 2 m allowed us to build a detailed model.

Choosing the Tool

Actually, we had to choose between ArcGIS and open applications –

QGIS/GRASS/SAGA. Although we desired to cope with the task by only using open
software,  unfortunately, we failed to do so. The choice was made in favor of ArcGIS,
because free/open programs, despite their full functionality, are quite complex for
beginners. Reference materials are often incomplete (though I have to note that GRASS
GIS has a nice page dedicated exclusively to the creation of DTM from contour lines),
sometimes it happens that the description of a module in GRASS-wiki very sparingly
describes the purpose of the program and covers only part of the parameters, leaving the
rest for people with experience in programming / academic backgrounds or with a
developed intuition.

Therefore, with the ArcMap Advanced licence available, it was decided to use that
program, which in turn has a well-structured help information. Also, availability of a
special Topo to Raster tool contributed to the choice of ArcGIS. According to developers,
it is designed speci cally to work with topographical input data to create hydrologically
correct elevation models. Seems to be just what we need!

Topo to Raster Comparison with other instruments

So the very rst factors to play in favor of Topo to Raster were the user-friendly interface
and detailed documentation. ESRI provides two help pages for your module: A general
description of the parameters and “how it works“.

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Apart from the documentation, a vast variety of possible input data  – as compared to
other tools – bene ts the choice of Topo to Raster. In fact, in our case it was only
contours and a boundary of the processing area. The latter can be set using GRASS
tools as well, but is not that simple. And here we simply choose a freeform extent shape-
le and specify that this is the limit of the processing area – and Topo to Raster does the
rest. Incidentally, this is a very important thing when building DEM. If you create DTM for
any speci c real-world objects (such as our Forest Park), quite often the shape won’t be
rectangular. An option to specify the extent of irregular shape often means a signi cant
saving of computing time. Other interpolation tools in ArcMap, by the way, lack this
excellent option of setting an arbitrary extent as input. Well, after a little tinkering, you
probably can specify the extent in this Environment settings, but you’ll might agree that
Topo to Raster makes it easier.

Our ROI outline

To sum up, it should be noted that apart from the already mentioned contours and region
of interest boundaries, Topo to Raster takes point elevation, streams, lakes, coastlines,
cliffs, and areas of exclusion as input. In our peculiar case we just had contours and the
extent, but the material for adding other elements of terrain – through digitization –
remains at our ngertips…

The dif culties of creating DEM from contours

When it may start to seem that this post will be all about praising the tool that has been
mentioned for 7 times already, it is worth saying why we got so obsessed with it.
Actually, we can go straightforward: because we had to create DEM from contours.

Let’s discuss it a little bit.

Although contours, perhaps, are the most familiar way of terrain representation for
reader’s understanding, which is familiar to most of us from topographic maps and
intuitive shading on physical maps, still it is not optimal for computer processing. This
idea is not my own, it is repeated many times on the internet; that’s at least on the
mentioned page on principles of Topo to Raster operation in the section on the use of
contours. Let’s try to develop this thought.

The thing is that DEM creation is a process of interpolation. And interpolation, you know,
it likes it more to have inputs of a uniform spatial distribution (ideally – a regular network

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structure). Judge for yourself: given some regular grid, with just a simple linear function
we can derive intermediate values, then add the desired smoothing – and voila! we have
a nice smooth surface. Instead, contours are a type of input with very uneven spatial
distribution. The problem, as stated on the mentioned page, is the lack of data between
contours. Roughly speaking, we have a line that represents a set of points which are,
pardon the tautology, along a certain line …and between them – nothing, emptiness!
Interpolation algorithm, whichever we would pick (one can start reading about them
here) tend to think that input values have great power, great weight in the calculations
and they have to – they de nitely  will – be reflected in the nal result.

What’s this about? We want to say that DEMs created from contour lines will
unfortunately display these lines or will have some other kind of distortions, or
“artifacts.” One can have a good look at different kinds of DEM artifacts on the already
mentioned GRASS-wiki page. Yes, unfortunately, Topo to Raster also creates a model
that is not devoid of artifacts, but by far this terrain model looks very realistic and
correct. Artifacts of our model are “ribs” that show where input contours had been.

Artefacts with contours overlaid

Also, sometimes there are non-systematic artifacts caused by some distortions in the
input data.

Casual drains

More speci c / suitable for interpolation algorithms than contours

… are points! In an ideal world, we would carry out a LiDAR survey and go on with point
clouds processing… But even with no such resources we should pay attention to point

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datasets. Essentially, because it is points that most of the conventional interpolation

algorithms work with. For IDW, Kriging, Spline and others, ESRI’s help stated it is “input
point datasets”. And GRASS-wiki page informs us that many of the interpolation
algorithms, described there, require input vector contours to be rasterized. Thus we get
the raster cells which de nitely are not tied linear objects.

So, can we get point data from topographic maps in order to use a less speci c tool
when we don’t have a licence to use Topo to Raster – the answer is Yes.

As this Japanese manual says, we can only digitize peaks, depressions and the inflection
points of elevation contours. It is also possible to use, for example, GPS-measurements
of point elevation. …or wait until ordering a LiDAR survey becomes as easy as ordering
sushi delivery. Using point data we can pick less speci c interpolation methods, which
can produce quite a rough model though, if they are not designed speci cally for
topographic information.

But the point elevation data is suitable for our Topo to Raster, too. As noted certain
elevation points on the topographic map can also be selectively digitized and set as
input. But you can also, and this, perhaps, may seem a bit strange, take our contours and
convert them to points! This idea may evolve after reading tools review on GRASS-wiki,
where such an operation is required for many of the tools. Lines can be converted to
points, for example, using QGIS tool  Extract Nodes (Vector-> Geometry Tools->Extract
Nodes).

Tool illustration

Next we offer these contours converted to points to Topo to Raster… and get the result
that is slightly different from the processing of contour lines. In general, this is the same
DEM, which has almost the same heights (height values for each speci c cell may be
slightly different) and all the same forms of relief, but it has different artifacts.

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Artefacts of point model

This DEM displays planes better, as they don’t have such obvious “ribs”; softer and
generally in somewhat less detail it shows steep sections, and instead of “ribs” it has
“drops” which sometimes create a sort of “orange peel”. Obviously, the “drops” and their
clusters are a consequence of uneven data  – same as in the case with lines. Yet, in our
opinion, such an experiment makes sense, as we have seen that in some aspects this
model has its advantages.

Practical work with Topo to Raster

Let’s examine in detail the practical work with Topo to Raster: input data and model
parameters that allowed us to build the most detailed model.

Input data with drop-down type selection

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Input data have been already discussed. In addition to the contours, we can opt for the
processing area extent and contours converted into points. Perhaps we could make use
of digitized cliffs and lakes, but so far managed with contours only. There is greater
choice regarding processing options. More detail on them below.

Parameters section

Model processing parameters

There is a variety of them:

cell_size – cell size (spatial resolution of the resulting model),

extent – extent (if not le with area of interest is given),

margin – margins (distance to interpolate beyond the input extent),

minimum_z_value – a user-de ned minimum elevation value,

maximum_z_value – a user-de ned maximum elevation value,

maximum_iterations – a maximum number of iterations (a maximum number of

times instrument passes over the interpolation surface) and other…

13 parameters in total, all are available for studying on the aforementioned tool’s page. It
has to be mentioned that almost all of the parameters are optional – apart from the input
data. Still they need user’s attention, as, for example, by default, spatial resolution is
calculated as the least of the input dataset’s height or width dimensions  – in the units

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used in the dataset’s coordinate system – divided by 250. So you may guess how rough
will be the model with no properly set cell_size parameter.

Also available are eight optional output data sets. These are mainly data sets that can be
used to assess the quality of the output DEM, and a le with parameters which can be
edited and re-used in further work or serve as a reminder of settings used for one or
another DEM version.

Optional outputs

But let’s get back to the model creation parameters and discuss which ones were of the
the greatest interest, how they were modi ed and influenced the output.

cell_size. Because of the relatively small size of the territory and relatively small
elevation excess it seemed logical to make a very detailed model. Most attempts were
performed for the spatial resolution of 1, 2, 3, 4 and 10 m. The higher the resolution, the
more details thr DEM contains, but at the same time – more visible distortion. Also, cell
size, of course, affects the speed of DEM creation and used memory volume (Topo to
Raster is a memory-intensive process). DEM with a resolution of ~3 m seemed to be
optimal. Later it was stretched to 1.5 m resolution with no signi cant loss of quality
(using Resample tool, Bilinear method).

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Different resolutions

Units of measurement are important when setting the cell_size parameter. If we use the
geographic coordinate system (e.g., WGS 84), the cell size value is calculated in degrees,
and if the projected coordinate system (e.g., UTM Zone 37N) – in meters. So if working
with input data in WGS 84, we set the resolution of 1, we get the cell size of 1°, which, I
venture to suggest, in the case of our territory will look like… probably one pixel. To
convert from degrees to meters, unit conversion factor must be used. It can be taken
from the below table (approximate):

Units conversion factor

From To

Feet Meters Degrees

Feet 1 0.3048 0.000003

Meters 3.28084 1 0.00001

(see here)

…or calculated more precisely using a formula for WGS84.

Discretisation error factor (discrete_error_factor). This parameter is used to adjust the

smoothing effect. Interest in it was caused by expectations that higher values will
overcome ribbing in the model. Some smoothing could actually be observed, but high
values of the parameter resulted in the generation of strange “bulges”. Eventually, the
values of 1 (default) and 2 proved to be the best for our model.

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Illustration of bulges

Primary type of input data (data_type). This parameter appeared to be interesting

because when processing contours converted to points with this parameter left with its
default value of CONTOUR, then the output looks somewhat better than when seemingly
logical SPOT was used.

Contour vs. Spot

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The remaining parameters either didn’t make an obvious effect on the output, or were too
dif cult to understand what kind of impact they actually have.

So, here I tried to talk about the issues faced when creating a DEM using contour lines. I
hope this was useful! In case I have missed anything, or there is a better way of doing
things, feel free to correct me!

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Author: Andriy Plakhotnyk

GIS-technician at Intetics Co. Interested in all things weird and cool about
geography, maps and GIS.

Tags: # ArcGIS # ArcMap # contour # DEM # GRASS # Topo to Raster

# горизонталі # ЦМР

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