Automation of the Terrain Classification Process due to Passability Taking the Microrelief Shapes into Consideration

Topographical relief is one of the key components of the landscape. It has a big influence on human activities and also strongly affects conducting Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield process. Thus, there is a need to extract the most information possible about the relief. This task can be accomplished thanks to Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and high resolution Digital Elevation Models (DEM), which are produced from the airborne laser scanning technology. The models allow the detecting of microrelief shapes, which have a significant impact on the cross-country movement of different vehicles. In this paper there is a tool presented, that was developed in Python programming technology. It indicates impassable areas on high resolution Digital Elevation Models by taking into account microrelief shapes. In the algorithm there was used an authorial method of the parallel shift of the plane. In the research, there were different resolution DEMs used and created on the basis of LIDAR data (with pixel size 0.5 m, 1 m, 2.5 m and 5 m), and three models of vehicles used in the Polish Armed Forces: Honker, Star 266 and HMMWV (colloquially Humvee). Obtained results showed that the developed tool detects impassable areas correctly. Further analysis demonstrated that the most optimal solution is to use the elevation model with 1m pixel size because results are sufficiently accurate and time execution of the algorithm is reasonable.