DIGITAL ELEVATION MODEL ALTERNATIVES ASSESSMENT FOR DEFORMATION ANALYSIS PURPOSES USING GNSS AND INSAR

Abstract

Digital Elevation Model (DEM) is the starting point in the analysis performed to explain the deformation pattern changes from the Earth's surface. The estimated value of deformation based on point-wise GPS and InSAR data with a better spatial resolution must be defined in a reference frame system that reflects the phenomenon of deformation of the real physical world, e.g., orthometric height for the vertical component. Therefore, this study aims to provide alternative DEM models based on a suitable combination between the Global Geopotential Model of Earth Geopotential Model 2008 (EGM2008) and global terrain models, providing position changes with respect to the orthometric height. The alternative DEM models are (i) the global elevation model of ETOPO1 (DEM1), (ii) the modified global elevation model of SRTM30_PLUS (DEM2), and (iii) the regional elevation model of DEMNAS (DEM3). These alternative models comply with each other for the land areas with mean difference values lower than 1 meter. While for the ocean areas, we found that DEM1 and DEM2 have apparent differences due to the different types of data used. However, a similar assessment could not be performed for DEM3 as it only covers the land areas. Additionally, we compared the orthometric height from these terrain models with leveling observations for the coinciding locations. DEM3 achieves the highest accuracy with the estimated standard deviation of 11.2745 meters and is followed by DEM2 and DEM1 with the respective standard deviation of 29.4498 and 37.6872 meters. We found that these models can be used as a starting position determination for horizontal and vertical deformation analysis.