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SCALGO software unlocks the full potential of modern detailed terrain data.
Our Advantages
The last decade has seen a tremendous increase in the availability of detailed and thus massive terrain data, mainly due to advances in mapping technologies such as airborne LIDAR. The full potential of the detailed data is not being utilized because most current software applications have problems handling the massive data sets. SCALGO software eliminates these problems and unlocks the full potential of the detailed data.
Problems
The problems of most current software stem from the use of inefficient algorithms, and they often result in cumbersome workflows (i.e. the need for breaking data into tiles for individual processing and with subsequent tile-reintegration complications), ill-specified output (e.g. because of the need for use of heuristic solutions) and/or use of only part of the available data (e.g. because detailed data has to be coarsened/thinned to make it small enough to be processed).
SCALGO solution
SCALGO technology utilizes novel mathematical and algorithmic techniques, which are a result of more than two decades of basic and applied research on handling massive datasets. As a result, the unique advantages of SCALGO software include:
- Efficient handling of massive terrain datasets even on a normal workstation.
- Proven efficiency on all datasets independent of exact input data configuration.
- Facilitating the use of full-resolution data, avoiding problems such as data thinning.
- Simplifying the workflow for example by removing the need for data tiling.
- Delivering fully-specified output leading to more reliable results.
Illustration of the effect of data thinning: River network (cells with an upstream area greater than 50 km2) extracted using a 90-meter resolution terrain model (left) and a full 2-meter resolution model (right). The computation on the full-resolution model, processed using SCALGO software, very accurately follows a river as it is marked on a Google map.
Note that the use of data tiling to process a full resolution model is very difficult, since the upstream area of a cell can be affected by cells very far away (and thus of data in other tiles).
Illustration of more reliable output: River network extracted from a terrain model where all depressions have been filled (left) and where SCALGO software has been used to only fill insignificant depressions (right). Depressions are normally filled before modeling flow and extracting river networks, but filling all depressions can lead to loss of a lot of detail (and very large flat areas). With SCALGO software insignificant depressions can be filled in a fully specified way leading to more realistic river networks while maintaining most of the terrain detail.