Development and Accuracy Assessment of High-Resolution Digital Elevation Model Using GIS Approaches for the Nile Delta Region, Egypt (original) (raw)

A high accuracy Digital Elevation Model (DEM) for the Nile delta region, Egypt is needed for several environmental applications, particularly for investigating the hazardous impacts of sea level rise and land subsidence phenomena. Since there is no official published national DEM for Egypt, an original high accuracy local digital elevation model (LDEM) for that region has been created using nine Spatial Interpolation Methods (SIMs) within a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) environment. The interpolation process took place after digitizing over than 220 topographic maps of scale 1:25,000, where more than 810,000 elevation (spot heights) points have been extracted from these maps. Multiple parameters and criteria for each SIM were applied to reach the optimal settings to produce a LDEM for environmental applications. The developed LDEMs have been compared against eight free Global Digital Elevation Models (GDEMs) using about 200 known GPS/levelling Ground Control Points (GCPs), wh...