COMPARISON OF TECHNIQUES FOR GENERATING DIGITAL TERRAIN MODELS FROM CONTOUR LINES

Simple but objective criteria for evaluating the quality of DTMs, deri ved from digital contour lines, are defined. Such criteria are then ap plied to terrain models, obtained by means of four different procedure s, which refer to three sample areas characterized by complex morpholo gical settings. The results of the comparison shows that each DTM is a ffected by one or more types of error or pitfall; however, one TIN gen erator and one grid interpolator proved to be capable of effectively p roducing terrain models which largely reflect the ground morphology as expressed by the input contour lines.