Inter-comparison and assessment of digital elevation models for hydrological applications in the Upper Mahi River Basin

Abstract

This study evaluates and compares the accuracy and reliability of multiple freely available digital elevation models (DEMs) including Copernicus Global Land Operations (GLO), Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS), Cartosat, Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), and Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) for hydrological applications in the Mahi River upper basin in Western India. Through watershed delineation, statistical analysis, error quantification, and 2D hydraulic modeling using HEC-RAS, this research assesses the performance of these DEMs with GLO DEM as the reference. GLO DEM is used as the reference because key findings show it most accurately delineates watershed boundaries and stream networks and has the fewest sinks. ALOS also demonstrates strong performance, with 70.47% watershed boundary similarity to GLO. Cartosat shows reasonable accuracy in watershed delineation with a Jaccard Index (JI) of 68.41% while SRTM and ASTER appear less reliable. Statistical analysis reveals ALOS slightly overestimates while other DEMs underestimate elevations compared to GLO for most of the slope classes. Flood modeling shows GLO produces the smoothest inundation, with ALOS second-best. Overall, GLO and ALOS emerge as the most accurate and reliable options followed by Cartosat among freely available datasets for the study area. The research provides insights into DEM performance to inform selection and improve hydrological applications involving terrain data for the study area.