Title :
A pyramid approach to lossless data compression of grid-based digital elevation models
Author :
Scarmana, Gabriel ; McDougall, Kevin
Author_Institution :
Fac. of Health, Eng. & Sci., Univ. of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD, Australia
Abstract :
A DEM can be represented like an image, except that it contains a single channel of information of various shades of grey and can be compressed in a lossy or lossless manner by way of existing image compression protocols. Compression has the effect of reducing memory requirements and speed of transmission over digital links, while maintaining the integrity of data as required. In this context, this paper investigates the use of an alternative image pyramid approach for DEM lossless compression referred to as Pyramid Lossless Differential Coding (PLDC). The effect of the PLDC on floating-point elevation values for 16-bit DEMs of dissimilar terrain characteristics is investigated here. Tests demonstrate that the compression ratios and compression speed achieved with this approach can be comparable to, or better than, lossless proprietary JPEG variants and other image formats (i.e. PNG, TIFF).
Keywords :
data compression; digital elevation models; geophysical image processing; geophysical techniques; 16-bit DEM; DEM lossless compression; PLDC effect; Pyramid Lossless Differential Coding; data integrity; dissimilar terrain characteristics; floating-point elevation values; grey shades; grid-based digital elevation models; image compression protocols; image formats; lossless data compression; lossless proprietary JPEG variants; pyramid approach; single information channel; transmission speed; Complexity theory; Digital elevation models; Image coding; Lakes; Standards; Transform coding; DEM compression; Image Pyramid; Image processing; Terrain modelling;
Conference_Titel :
Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS), 2014 IEEE International
Conference_Location :
Quebec City, QC
DOI :
10.1109/IGARSS.2014.6946981
