Extracting Topographic Data from Online Sources

to Generate a Digital Elevation Model for Highway

Preliminary Geometric Design
Sikai Chen 1; Zongxin Tang 2; Hao Zhou 3; and Jianchuan Cheng, Ph.D. 4
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Abstract: Two principal aspects of preliminary highway design are detailed characterization of the geographic and topographic features
along potential candidate alignments and preliminary design of the highway along at least one of these candidates. The digital elevation model
(DEM) of the existing terrain is essential for these tasks. However, generating a DEM requires excessive time and effort. This research paper
proposes a quick and practical technique to extract geographic and topographic data from freely available online resources to generate a DEM
for purposes of preliminary highway geometric design. A primary step in construction of the DEM was to quantify relationships between
actual distance on the ground, computer screen resolution and size, and scale of the virtual earth, and then use these relationships to extract the
data automatically. The area displaying position and elevation data were positioned and subsequently saved as images. Image recognition
techniques were then used to interpret the position and elevation data. Data storage management was subsequently conducted to minimize the
error generated due to decimal place omission. In doing so, the accuracy of the extracted geographic data were enhanced to meet the require-
ments for preliminary geometric design. The DEMs were then constructed using the extracted geographic data. To demonstrate the efficacy of
the developed method and to verify its accuracy, the paper used data from a mountainous region located in the Sichuan Province of China.
The results showed that the proposed method is practical and that the constructed DEM is reliable and reasonable. Further, compared with
traditional methods, the proposed DEM construction method is less time-consuming and laborious, and more functionally consistent with
available online resources. DOI: 10.1061/JTEPBS.0000212. © 2019 American Society of Civil Engineers.

Introduction
The successive phases of transportation asset development are plan-
ning, design, construction, operations (including maintenance and
monitoring), and end of life (Sinha et al. 2017). As responsible stew-
ards of the taxpayer-funded public infrastructure, highway agencies
are accountable to allocate available budgets that achieve maximized
economic returns (Li et al. 2013). This requires highway agencies to
carefully evaluate, at each phase, alternatives for designing, con-
structing, operating, and maintaining the infrastructure, and to select
the most cost-effective option. At the planning and design phases, the
highway agency considers multiple alternatives in terms of location,
alignment, material types, and orientations and dimensions of design
elements. Traditionally, planning and design are carried out in-house
by the highway administrative district where the proposed highway
is to be located or by consultants hired by the highway department.
Transportation infrastructure planning and design are mostly carried
out using geographic information systems (GIS), the traditional plat-
form for two-dimensional (2D) mapping of spatial data that also
1 AASHTO (2011) recommends that horizontal and vertical
Ph.D. Candidate, Lyles School of Civil Engineering, Purdue Univ.,
550 Stadium Mall Dr., West Lafayette, IN 47906. Email: chen1670@
purdue.edu
2
Ph.D. Candidate, School of Transportation, Southeast Univ.,
2 Sipailou, Nanjing 210096, China. Email: zxtang@seu.edu.cn
3
Graduate, School of Transportation, Southeast Univ., 2 Sipailou,
Nanjing 210096, China. Email: yhzhou@seu.edu.cn
4
Professor, School of Transportation, Southeast Univ., 2 Sipailou,
Nanjing 210096, China (corresponding author). Email: jccheng@seu
.edu.cn
Note. This manuscript was submitted on February 28, 2018; approved
on August 8, 2018; published online on January 17, 2019. Discussion per-
iod open until June 17, 2019; separate discussions must be submitted
for individual papers. This paper is part of the Journal of Transportation
Engineering, Part A: Systems, © ASCE, ISSN 2473-2907.
helps to store, analyze, and visualize such data over large areas
(Moloney et al. 2017; Liao et al. 2018). The advantage of in-house
design is that the designers tend to be intimately familiar with the
natural and anthropogenic features of the terrain and any local con-
straints, and this knowledge helps to yield designs that are effective
and safe (INDOT 2013).
In the current era, however, there are more and more cases where
infrastructure is planned and designed by entities external to the
highway agency; this trend is facilitated by globalization, where
projects are designed, planned, and financed by international firms.
Therefore, it may be the case that most current geometric design
practitioners are unaccustomed with certain features of the physical
environment of the proposed infrastructure (e.g., surface natural
and man-made features, local ecology). This knowledge is critical
to the effective long-term performance of transportation assets
(Simpson and Harris 2017). A design that fails to adequately ac-
commodate these features generally impairs the long-term resil-
ience of the infrastructure and its sustainable development (Sinha
and Labi 2007).
alignments be coordinated during the preliminary design stage. At
this stage, a critical step is to identify geological and geographic
features of the terrain along the alignment in question, and to quan-
tify the performance (benefits and costs) of alternative alignments
because such performance is strongly related to the existing surface
features. The conventional practice is to carry out preliminary geo-
metric design using digital elevation models (DEMs) on a scale
of 1:50,000 (MOT 2007). Thus, this process does not require geo-
graphic data of very high precision.
At each phase of highway development, engineers are mobiliz-
ing advanced technologies to facilitate their tasks. In the construc-
tion phase, advanced scheduling techniques are being adopted
(Sinha and Labi 2007); in the monitoring phase, robotic sensors

© ASCE 04019003-1 J. Transp. Eng., Part A: Syst.

J. Transp. Eng., Part A: Systems, 2019, 145(4): 04019003

 are being deployed to detected and characterize defects (Tsai et al.
2012); in the materials selection stage of the design phase, ad-
vanced long-lasting materials are being explored. In the design
phase, where a persistent challenge has been the digital characteri-
zation of the existing terrain, cost-effective ways to do this are
being sought.
Online resources, including the freely available Google Earth
(GE) tool, have revolutionized the way design practitioners interact
with spatial data (Butler 2006), which can help characterize the
existing terrain. GE facilitates visualization of any location on the
Earth’s surface. Since 2005, when it was made available for public
use, GE has evolved into a widely used tool for academic research
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and other purposes. In its latest version (7.1 as of July 16, 2017),
GE lacks the functionality—the application programming interfa-
ces (APIs)—that facilitate interaction between geographic data and
user (Google Developers 2014). This greatly impairs the applica-
tion of GE in the acquisition of data vital for DEM development.
To address this issue, this paper proposes a no-cost and practical
method to extract geographic data from such an online resource
to generate DEMs for preliminary geometric design. The paper’s
method also facilitates the extraction of surface features, making
the generated DEM comparable with the digital surface model
(DSM), thus fostering efficient and effective design of the highway
alignment.
Literature Review
Data on three-dimensional (3D) characterization of terrain is criti-
cal for effective geometric design (Makanae and Dawood 2009)
and optimization (Jha and Schonfeld 2004) of highway alignments.
Traditionally, highway designers have obtained this data through
field surveying using geomatic instruments such as electronic to-
tal stations. However, these data acquisition methods are time-
consuming and costly in terms of resource use (Jha and Schonfeld
2004; Findley et al. 2013). To overcome these limitations, several
alternative methods have been developed over the last decades to
facilitate characterization of terrain surfaces, including global po-
sitioning systems, remote sensing systems, and laser imaging (Wolf
2002) among others. Of these emerging techniques, GE shows
remarkable advantages.
Land surface characterization tools such as GE have continued
to improve the way users interact with the digital world (Butler
2006). Using such tools, designers can carry out, quickly and in-
teractively, versatile design functions in a manner that was once
thought to be impossible. These functions include the estimation
of building heights (Qi et al. 2016) and highway bridge vertical
clearance, agricultural land uses (Taylor and Lovell 2012), and
identification of spatial land characteristics after disasters
(Nourbakhsh et al. 2006). In the transportation domain, GE has
been found to be an exceedingly effective and applicable tool for
highway asset inventory, asset characterization and management
(Darter et al. 2007; Xiong et al. 2015), crash site location and char-
acterization (Haleem and Abdel-Aty 2010; Wang et al. 2018), and
future autonomous vehicle operations (Gargoum et al. 2017). These
achievements have been mostly based on high-resolution aerial and
satellite images provide by GE.
In addition, GE high-resolution aerial and satellite imagery can
be used to evaluate roadway safety performance by measuring
existing roadway features, including sight distance (Easa et al.
2017; Wang et al. 2017), curvature (Geedipally and Pratt 2017;
Tang et al. 2018), clearances (Xu et al. 2014), median width
(Fitzpatrick et al. 2016; Wang et al. 2014; Chen et al. 2017b),
deflection angle (Geedipally and Pratt 2017), number of lanes
© ASCE 04019003-2
J. Transp. Eng., Part A: Systems, 2019, 145(4): 04019003
(Fitzpatrick et al. 2016; Wang et al. 2014; Chen et al. 2017a), lane
width (Bassani et al. 2016; Fitzpatrick et al. 2016; Geedipally and
Pratt 2017; Labi et al. 2017), and shoulder width (Bassani et al.
2016; Fitzpatrick et al. 2016; Geedipally and Pratt 2017; Chen
et al. 2019). High-resolution imagery can be used for characterizing
the features of multiple classes of roadways, including rural roads
(Bassani et al. 2016; Geedipally and Pratt 2017; Shrestha et al.
2017) and freeways (Fitzpatrick et al. 2016). Moreover, based
on extracted geometric features, high-resolution imagery can be
used for traffic operations analysis (Gong and Fan 2017) and policy
making (Pham et al. 2015).
The geographic and elevational data available in land sur-
face characterization tools originate from the DEM constructed by
NASA’s Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM 2016). Since
2003, worldwide topographical data with 90-m (295-ft) accuracy
have been available to the public. Topographical data in the United
States have been as precise as 30 m (98 ft) since NASA updated its
global data to that level of accuracy in 2014 (NASA 2017). Since
then, the data have been made available to the public, and there has
been a significant amount of research and practice (applications)
worldwide to validate and verify the accuracy of data available
in land surface characterization databases and tools including GE.
Benker et al. (2011) found that topographical data in GE for the Big
Bend region in Texas have an accuracy of 2.64 m RMS error
(RMSE) horizontal and 1.63 m RMSE vertical. The RMSE of data
for Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, is 2.18 m for horizontal and 1.51 m for
height, respectively (Farah 2014). Positional accuracy of horizontal
data is assessed to be approximately 0.1–2.7 m separately to the
north and south of Montreal, Canada (Goudarzi and Landry
2017). The authors also provided two methods to correct observed
positional errors and specifically to reduce or even eliminate them.
However, control points are required for both error reduction
methods.
Summing up, for the past few years, GE has become more
broadly applied in transportation engineering for its superior reli-
ability and practicality. Digital land surface characterization tools
are useful for an array of practical applications in transportation.
For example, it has been determined that the topographical data in
GE have an accuracy of around 30 m worldwide (Google Developers
2017). However, the literature shows that actual accuracy (aerial/
satellite imagery and topography) is much more precise—as high
as about 5 m depending on region and terrain (Benker et al. 2011;
Wang et al. 2017), which is sufficient for preliminary geometric de-
sign of highways (MOT 2007). The topographical data available in
land surface characterization tools such as GE can be extracted at no
cost to the user. Therefore, the extraction of GE data for generating
DEMs for highway preliminary geometric design can be considered
for highway design applications.
Methodology
Traditional Data Extraction Technologies and Their
Limitations
As discussed earlier, GE currently does not provide API inter-
faces to connect users and data. In this respect, the API provided
by Google Maps can serve as an alternative for users seeking to
build a digital characterization of terrain. However, the Google
Map API key is limited to extraction of only 2,500 points of geo-
graphical data daily; with an accuracy of 5 m, 2,500 points corre-
sponds to 0.0625 km2 (250 × 250 m). Therefore, for a highway of
100 km in length and 30 m in width, a 3-km2 surface area will be
required for construction. Because the total potential area to locate
J. Transp. Eng., Part A: Syst.
 possible schemes would be 300 km2 , it would take 4,800 days to
extract geographical data for purposes of characterizing this high-
way’s terrain, which is obviously impractical. Other ways to obtain
such geographical data include the software such as Autodesk Infra-
works, but such resources are very costly ($1,575 for a single permit
per year). To overcome the drawbacks and limitations associated
with traditional geographical data extraction, this paper proposes
a new method to extract geographical data from a free and publicly
available online resource using image recognition techniques.
Data Extraction by Image Recognition
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As mentioned earlier, DEMs, at least on a scale of 1:50;000, are
conventionally used for preliminary geometric design. The absolute
error (Δ) of these DEMs is less than 5 m (the minimum length that
can be identified by the human eye is 0.1 mm). Therefore, the DEM
generated from the geographic data extracted from GE Pro (whose
absolute error is less than 1 m), is adequate for this purpose.
The absolute error of the extracted data consists of two parts:
(1) the intrinsic error of data, which cannot be controlled by the
user and arises from the manner of data collection (this error is mea-
sured in a later section of this paper) and (2) manual error, which
can be controlled by the user and is generated mostly during data
extraction from the GE Pro and is associated with the interval of the
data points. Manual error can be quantified based on the scale of the
virtualized earth and screen size and resolution. Like most other
electronic applications, GE’s main interface consists of the title,
menu, tool bar, and side bar. GE has a full-screen model. By point-
ing the mouse to a specific location, the geographic and elevation
data associated with that location are displayed on the status bar.
The mechanism involves a translation of the pointer position on
screen to its geographic coordinate and its subsequent display.
In Google Earth Version 4.x and earlier, functions to translate rel-
ative coordinates on screen into geographic coordinates are pack-
aged in the Google COM API, and geographic data extraction is not
associated with the position of mouse pointer. However, none of
these functions are provided in version 7.X for security reasons.
At each location targeted by the mouse pointer, the status bar dis-
plays longitude, latitude, elevation, and eye altitude. Therefore, by
moving the mouse pointer, it is possible to generate a data matrix
from which a DEM can be extracted. The movement of the mouse
pointer is related to screen size and resolution.
Consider a computer screen resolution of a × b and screen
size C (conventionally in inches). Consequently, the pixels per inch
(PPI) of the screen can be expressed as
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
PPI ¼ a2 þ b2 C ð1Þ
where a and b = horizontal and vertical resolutions, respectively, in
pixels; and C = size in inches.
The scale of the current virtual earth is denoted ζ. Thus,
the actual distance between any two neighboring pixels is
ðða2 þ b2 Þ1=2 Þ=ðC × ζÞ), in inches. Most operating systems pro-
vide an interface to automatically control mouse pointer movement
(quantified in pixels). The increment of a single movement is δ
pixel(s). The actual distance covered by a single movement on
a virtual earth is n × ðða2 þ b2 Þ0.5 Þ=ðC × ζÞ in inches. The abso-
lute error of the extracted geographic data must be within 1 m.
Therefore
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
δ a2 þ b2 ð0.0254C × ζÞ < 1 ð2Þ
Inequality (2) can be converted into a more explicit formu-
lation, as
© ASCE 04019003-3
J. Transp. Eng., Part A: Systems, 2019, 145(4): 04019003
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
δ < ð0.0254C × ζÞ a2 þ b2 ð3Þ
where δ = length of a single mouse pointer movement; and
ζ = scale of the current virtual earth.
In this paper, a Python program was written to ensure that the
mouse pointer can be moved automatically as the point profiles are
extracted. The geographic data were automatically written into an
Excel file, and the interval of each increment of mouse pointer
movement was fixed. Alternatively, an appropriate programming
language can be used to ensure that the keyboard keys permit
step-by-step movement of the pointer. In this paper, for vertical
movements, the U key is clicked to move each þ1 step and the
J key is clicked for each −1 step; for horizontal movements, the
K key is clicked to move each þ1 step and the H key is clicked
for each −1 step. These keys control screen movement across the
computer screen and not the virtual earth.
GE includes a full-screen model in which a virtual earth domi-
nates the main interface while the title, menu, and status bar take up
relatively little (but substantial) screen space. Therefore, the maxi-
mum steps for the pointer’s movement can be determined. Space
for the taskbar, title, and menu varies, and can be quantified by
vertical sizes α1 , α2 , and α3 , respectively, in pixels. Thus, the
mouse pointer can move only within the pixel constraints as
follows:

nh < ½a δ

nv ¼ ½ðb − α1 − α2 − α3 Þ δ ð4Þ
where nh = maximum pointer movement times in the horizontal
direction; nv = maximum pointer movement times in the vertical
direction; and [] = integer-valued function.
The parameters α1 , α2 , and α3 can be quantified based on
system and software characteristics. A practical way to determine
their values is to calculate their relative portions in a screenshot.
The pixels for the virtual earth equal a × ðb − ðα1 þ α2 þ α3 ÞÞ.
To eliminate errors, pixels can be set up as 0.95a × 0.95ðb − ðα1 þ
α2 þ α3 Þ). Eq. (4) can be rewritten as

nh < ½0.95a δ

nv < ½0.95ðb − α1 − α2 − α3 Þ δ ð5Þ
The space displaying the virtual earth (S) can be expressed as
S ¼ fsj0.025a < H < 0.975a; ð0.025b þ α1 Þ
< V < ð0.975b − α2 − α3 Þg ð6Þ
where S = limit of pointer movement; H = horizontal limit of
pointer movement; and V = vertical limit of pointer movement.
The relevant section of GE that displays position and elevation
information is shown in Fig. 1.
Data Storage and Management
After translating the pointer position on the screen into actual geo-
graphic coordinates, the position and elevation data were extracted
Fig. 1. Data elements–related top position and elevation: (a) latitude;
(b) longitude; and (c) elevation.
J. Transp. Eng., Part A: Syst.
 Table 1. Identified positional and elevational data
Point Longitude Latitude Elevation (m)
1 106.899389 31.907592 394.72
2 106.899397 31.907442 395.33
3 106.899403 31.907292 395.94
::: ::: ::: :::
31240 106.943333 31.889994 477.01

Table 2. Accuracy verification for proposed method

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Elevation difference Value (m)

Fig. 2. Calculation of longitudinal and latitudinal difference: (a) posi-
tional information; and (b) longitudinal and latitudinal difference.
and saved. The coordinates of positional and elevational data in
GE are formatted as ðX; Y; ZÞ, which can be interpreted by most
computer-aided design platforms. However, for simplifying the
task of importing data into AutoCAD (discussed in the next sec-
tion) to eliminate or reduce the possibility of errors and increase
robustness, the data should be transformed into radians. In doing
so, it is impractical to store infinite decimals for the extracted data
so some decimal places need to be omitted. To minimize the error
generated by omitting decimals within 5 m, it was decided to retain
an adequate number of decimal places, which depends on the po-
sition of the point. The point can be specified by longitude and
latitude, separately for the east-west and north-south position of
a point on the Earth’s surface. Longitude ranges from 0° (the Prime
Meridian) to þ180° eastward and −180° westward at the Interna-
tional Date line. Latitude ranges from 0° (at the equator) to 90°
northward or southward at the poles. One degree of longitude de-
pends on the latitude at which the point is located. The Earth is a
proximate sphere with an equatorial radius (Re ) of 6,378.137 km
and a polar radius (RP ) of 6,356.752 km, as shown in Fig. 2(a). The
difference between Re and RP is 21.385 km and 0.34% of Re . Thus,
the earth can be approximately treated as an ideal sphere and linear
interpolation used to calculate the distance between Point A on the
surface and at the geocenter.
The distance, RA [Fig. 2(b)], from Point A on the Earth’s surface
to the geocenter can be calculated using linear interpolation
[Eq. (7)]. From Eq. (7), it is seen that RA varies only with latitude
RA ¼ ðð90 − TÞRe þ T × RÞ=90 ð7Þ
There exists a point A1 ðL þ ΔL; TÞ on the same latitude as
point A0 . The longitudinal difference between A0 and A1 is ΔL.
Therefore, the length of A0 A1 (m) can be calculated as
 In this paper, AutoCAD, a common computer-aided design software,
A0 A1 ¼ ð1,000RA × ΔL × πÞ 180 ð8Þ
Similarly, for point A2 with a latitudinal difference of ΔT from
Point A0 , length A0 A2 (m) can be calculated as
 data format; no commands were written synchronously. Pretreatment
A0 A2 ¼ ð1,000RA × ΔT × πÞ 180 ð9Þ
Because ΔL and ΔT approach infinity, the arcs A0 A1 and A0 A2
can be treated as a line and denoted jA0 A1 j and jA0 A2 j, respectively.
The lengths of jA0 A1 j and jA0 A2 j should be less than 5 m to meet
the minimum accuracy requirement of preliminary design (MOT
2007). Thus, ΔL and ΔT should satisfy the following conditions:
Average 1.5
Maximum 6.55
Minimum 0.13
Standard deviation 2.56

ΔL ¼ f180 · A0 A1 =ð1000RA · πÞ ≤ 81 ½ð90 − TÞRe þ T · RP  · πg
and

ΔT ¼ f180 · A0 A2 =ð1000RA · πÞ ≤ 81 ½ð90 − TÞRe þ T · RP  · πg
ð10Þ
Consider the location identified in the next section as an exam-
ple. The latitudinal position of the area is between 31.88619
and 31.908078 N, and ΔL and ΔT corresponding to 5 m equal
4.4992 × 10−5 . Thus, the extracted data to be saved must have
six decimal places. Table 1 provides the extracted position and
elevation information of some sample points.
Validation of the Proposed Method
Prior to generating the DEM, there needs to be verification of the
accuracy of the 3D data extracted using the proposed method.
One thousand points are selected randomly from the data set of ex-
tracted data. Based on the positional data (i.e., longitude and latitude
information of each point) control elevation data were established
using field surveys, and the elevation difference between the control
point and the extracted point was calculated, as shown in Table 2.
The extracted points are located in a mountainous area. From
Table 2, it can be seen that the elevation difference between control
and extracted data is 1.5 m. However, in highway preliminary
design, the main objective is to locate all potential schemes. With
the help of satellite images, potential schemes can be reasonably
located when the elevation data are not as accurate.
DEM Generation
was used as the platform for generating the DEM. AutoCAD is
command-based and therefore uses a normative set of commands
to accomplish the extraction task. Lisp, a robust programming lan-
guage, was used to generate commands to import bulk data into
AutoCAD. For convenience, the geographic data were stored in pure
was carried out to import the extracted data into AutoCAD. Consider
Point 1 (Table 1) as an example: the original data format was trans-
formed into Lisp as (command “point” “106.899389, 31.907592,
394.72”). After pretreatment, the file was transformed into a text file
as a prototype of commands in accordance with Lisp standards. After
that, the geographic data were imported into AutoCAD and the DEM
was subsequently generated.

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Fig. 3. Topographical map for the case study.

topographical map to serve as a control to validate the results of

Fig. 4. Contour map for the case study.
Case Study, Results, and Discussion
In this paper, an area in Bashu City, Sichuan Province, China, was
used to illustrate the proposed approach. A reliable topographi-
cal map for this area (Fig. 3) was developed using traditional field
surveying, and a contour map (Fig. 4) was derived from the
the proposed approach.
Fig. 5 shows the generated contour map. The area labeled d is
not shown in Fig. 3. Clearly, if traditional surveying were used, a
very significant effort would be needed to acquire the topographical
data of this area. The contour map generated by the proposed ap-
proach (data packaged in GE with a satellite image as an underlay)
includes information related to topography, water systems, build-
ings, and terrain surface. For all practical purposes, this is equiv-
alent to the topographical map generated by traditional surveying
methods. Comparing the satellite image in Fig. 5 and the geo-
graphic and geomorphic features in Fig. 3, it can be seen that
the satellite image provides a more updated characterization of
the area’s features. The areas labeled a, b, and c, respectively,
in Figs. 3–5 are the same area in reality. In Fig. 3 the area is covered
by water, whereas in Fig. 5, which is an update, land reclamation
has taken place. As such, Fig. 5 represents a characterization that is
more reliable and reasonable for preliminary highway geometric
design.
Using the proposed method, 31,240 points were extracted, rec-
ognized, and saved. This process took 12 h, 10 min, and 1 s with a
hardware configuration consisting of an Intel core i7 2720m proc-
essor and 4 GB of RAM. In other words, it took 1.40 s to extract,
recognize, and save one point, excluding the cost of labor and other
resources.

Fig. 5. Contour map generated by GE data with satellite image as an underlay.

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J. Transp. Eng., Part A: Systems, 2019, 145(4): 04019003

 Table 3. Comparison of traditional surveying method and proposed
method
Traditional surveying method
Standard Proposed
Variable Maximum Maximum Minimum deviation method
Time (s)a 91.25 100 80 6.44 1.40
Labor 4 5 3 0.43 Free
(person)b
Instruments 1 total station theodolite (TST) 1 computer
Safety Practitioners exposed to natural and Free
accidental risks
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a
Approximate, based on surveying one point with an area of 25 m2 ;
generally, time consumption is greatly influenced by terrain.
b
Based on a group of practitioners to survey by total station.
Regarding traditional surveying methods, four professionals
from universities and eight professionals from design institutions
provided independent input. This was done to obtain 3D terrain
data with an accuracy of 5 m. A comparison of traditional survey-
ing and the proposed method was carried out and is provided in
Table 3.
Conclusions
Digital tools for land surface characterization have been applied in
transportation management. In highway preliminary design, for ex-
ample, DEMs on scale of 1:50,000 are conventionally used. From
the literature review conducted, it was determined that tools such as
GE meet this accuracy requirement but do not exceed it. Therefore,
a method was proposed to extract more accurate geographic data
from GE to generate a DEM for preliminary geometric design. The
proposed method is less time-consuming and less laborious than
traditional methods.
Current land surface characterization tools lack not only inter-
faces to directly extract geographic data but also features to trans-
late screen pointer position into coordinates. In this paper, a new
technique to automatically control the screen pointer and to man-
ually extract 3D topographical data was developed. Then a DEM
based on the extracted data was constructed. Using a case study,
data were analyzed and results were presented showing that the
constructed DEM with underlying satellite imagery provides a ba-
sis for preliminary design in the same way that topographical maps
developed from traditional field surveys do. Moreover, as satellite
images are updated regularly, the geographic and geomorphic fea-
tures in the DEM constructed using the proposed method can be
rendered more up to-date than the DEM developed using traditional
methods.
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