Interpolation of low resolution Digital Elevation Models: A comparison

Digital Elevation Model (DEM) is an important data used in varies geographical researches but it is difficult and costly to obtain a high resolution DEM. This paper evaluates the accuracy of interpolated high resolution DEM established from a low resolution DEM data obtained from an online resource which is freely accessible to researchers and academician. The low resolution DEM available online was obtained from the ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model (ASTER GDEM) project by Japan Space Systems (JSS). Six types of interpolation techniques, namely High Power Inverse Distance Weighted (IDW), Low Power IDW, Tension Spline, Regularized Spline, Ordinary Kriging and Universal Kriging are applied to the low resolution ASTER GDEM to produce the high resolution interpolated DEM. The accuracy of the interpolated DEM is performed by comparing the interpolated DEM with the reference DEM data obtained from the Malaysian Centre for Geospatial Data Infrastructure (MACGDI). Based on the experimental results, the ordinary kriging and universal kriging have shown a good result of 13.99m and 13.95m of average absolute difference respectively. The study suggests that the interpolated DEM generated from ASTER GDEM by JSS can be applied to conduct future studies if high resolution DEM is required.