EXTRACTING TOPOGRAPHIC TERRAIN FEATURES FROM ELEVATION MAPS

Some applications such as the autonomous navigation in natural terrain and the automation of map making process require high-level scene des criptions as well as geometrical representation of the natural terrain environments. In this paper, we present methods for building high lev el terrain descriptions, referred to as topographic maps, by extractin g terrain features like ''peaks,'' ''pits,'' ''ridges,'' and ''ravines '' from the contour map. The resulting topographic map contains the lo cation and type of terrain features as well as the ground topography. We present new algorithms for extracting topographic maps consisting o f topographic features (peaks, pits, ravines, and ridges) and contour maps. We develop new definitions for those topographic features based on the contour map. We build a contour map from an elevation map and g enerate the connectivity tree of all regions separated by the contours . We use this connectivity tree, called a topographic change tree, to extract the topographic features. Experimental results on a digital el evation model (DEM) supports our definitions for topographic features and the approach. (C) 1994 Academic Press, Inc.