High Resolution LiDAR DEM – How good is it?

Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) are the digital representation of natural topographic as well as man-made features located on the surface of the earth. For the last few decades, DEMs are widely used for resource management, urban planning, transportation planning, earth sciences, environmental assessments, and Geographic Information System (GIS) applications. The hydrologic community is also moving into a new era of using GIS technology (with the DEM of the area of interest being the primary and necessary input) in spatially explicit eco-hydrological, biophysical, hydrodynamic and hydraulic modelling approaches to answer critical on-ground questions such as choosing appropriate areas within catchments to implement different landuse changes and land management options. Almost all of the applications including water resource management and hydrological modelling require high resolution DEMs because the accuracy of DEMs significantly affects the accuracy of hydrological predictions.