3D Fractal reconstruction of terrain profile data based on digital elevation model

Digital Elevation Model (DEM) often makes it difficult for terrain reconstruction and data storage due to the failure in acquisition of details with higher resolution. If original terrain of DEM can be simulated, resulting in geographical details can be represented precisely while reducing the data size, then an effective reconstruction scheme is essential. This paper adopts two sets of real-world 3D terrain profile data to proceed data reducing, i.e. data sampling randomly, then reconstruct them through 3D fractal reconstruction. Meanwhile, the quantitative and qualitative difference generated from different reduction rates were evaluated statistically. The research results show that, if 3D fractal interpolation method is applied to DEM reconstruction, the higher reduction rate can be obtained for DEM of larger data size with respect to that of smaller data size under the assumption that the entire terrain structure is still maintained.