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Investigating error structure of shuttle radar topography mission elevation data product
Author(s) -
Becek Kazimierz
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2008gl034592
Subject(s) - shuttle radar topography mission , remote sensing , digital elevation model , terrain , elevation (ballistics) , geology , pixel , radar , upsampling , environmental science , computer science , geography , artificial intelligence , mathematics , cartography , telecommunications , image (mathematics) , geometry
An attempt was made to experimentally assess the instrumental component of error of the C‐band SRTM (SRTM). This was achieved by comparing elevation data of 302 runways from airports all over the world with the shuttle radar topography mission data product (SRTM). It was found that the rms of the instrumental error is about ±1.55 m. Modeling of the remaining SRTM error sources, including terrain relief and pixel size, shows that downsampling from 30 m to 90 m (1 to 3 arc‐sec pixels) worsened SRTM vertical accuracy threefold. It is suspected that the proximity of large metallic objects is a source of large SRTM errors. The achieved error estimates allow a pixel‐based accuracy assessment of the SRTM elevation data product to be constructed. Vegetation‐induced errors were not considered in this work.