A BOINC based System for Global Topographic Structure Extraction Using SRTM Digital Elevation Models

A public computing project named Terrain@home, is built on BOINC for extracting terrain features from global scope DEM data. Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), which is a near global scope database of high accuracy elevation data, is selected as test data for Terrain@home. Conventional algorithms for terrain features auto extracting for example slope gradient, delineating drainage networks and etc, have to be reorganized to adapt the public and distributed computing environment. The unique problem that presented in SRTM data is introduced in this paper. The testbed for Terrain@home is described and computing results from DEM blocks in Tibet plateau is established. Performance evaluation is the focus of the last section and it is confirmed that public computing is an effective method to handle massive geographic data.