A Simplification Method for Terrain Modeling

To solve the problem of three-dimensional terrain simplification in large-scale based on digital elevation model data, a terrain simplified method based on the theory of spatial autocorrelation was proposed. According to principle of regional similarities in geomorphology, a cluster analysis was performed on the terrain data to get the thresholds distinguish terrain features. On the basis, the gradient-based weighted method was adopted to fit elevation values of the center point and generated a new terrain mesh. The results of experiments show that the method to some extent reduces the size of the data, while maintaining good terrain features and curvature characteristic.