September 26, 2002 – Refractions Research Inc. has chosen Safe Software’s surface modeling and translation capabilities to complete a project for the British Columbia Ministry of Sustainable Resource Management. The project, which involves extracting over 7,000 elevation models from TRIM mapsheets (in SAIF format), aims to update the current BC Gridded DEM specification and to produce gridded DEM (Digital Elevation Model) data files. The key issue is to produce a complete, regular, high quality elevation model for all of British Columbia in several formats, including the Canadian Digital Elevation Data Standard (CDED).
The mapsheets to be extracted cover the entire province of British Columbia. Safe Software’s Feature Manipulation Engine (FME) estimates the DEM accuracy through a quality control process and detects and logs DEM anomalies. Once the anomalies have been repaired, FME’s surface model factory creates a 3D mathematical model that deals with edge effects, honours breaklines, flattens oceans and lakes, and assigns values to lakes with constant elevation. The FME then outputs the DEM in the CDED, ESRI ASCII Grid, and USGS DEM formats.
