DEM Fusion and Its Application in Mapping Topography of Complex Areas

It is difficult to map the topography of high hilly areas, for example Hengduan Mountain area, China, where is covered by the clouds, fog and mist, and can not be shined by sunlight most days all over the year, with elevations of very large range. It is very challenging to map the topography accurately depending on only one DEM generation method. This paper aims at showing the potential of fusing several DEMs generated using different sensors and methods, to provide a gapless DEM and improve the overall accuracy. InSAR, optical photogrammetry, radargrammetry from opposite directions are used to generate DEM and fused taking each one´s advantages. Results in Hengduan test site are analyzed and show an improvement of the fused DEM.