The Danish Styrelsen for Dataforsyning og Effektivisering has released the remaining areas of the new high-resolution Danish elevation model, extending the coverage to be national *. SCALGO is proud to announce that this updated model is now available in SCALGO Live under the name DHM/2015. The model is available for viewing, downloading and for creating workspaces anywhere in the country. The various derived models and hydrological layers will appear as they are ready, pending the completion of the model itself *.

Computation performance significantly improved

To meet the challenges of a new significantly larger national model we have also rolled out numerous updates to our backend infrastructure that enable us to reduce workspace recomputation time by up to a factor 7 in standard configurations, and even more in some cases. The changes include: fundamental algorithmic improvements to the computation software, new servers with upgraded disks, processors and memory and updated scheduling technology that increases parallelism of computations. The combined effect of all these is that workspaces on the new high-resolution model can be handled in almost the same time as similar-sized workspace areas in the old model before the upgrade.

(*) A few minor sections are not yet available, these have been reported and we are waiting for updated data.

We have added flow accumulation as well as watersheds derived from the new high-resolution (0.4 m) DHM/2015/Rain model of Denmark which includes the existing hydrological corrections. The model is currently available for Eastern Danmark. Interactive watershed queries using the watershed tool are also available.

We have also added a sea-level rise computation based on the DHM/2015/Sea model.

We have added a new elevation model to SCALGO Live. The model is called DHM/2015/Buildings and is a version of the new 0.4m Danish elevation model with building footprints, but without hydrological corrections. Thus, it sits between the base DHM/2015 model and the DHM/2015/Rain model added earlier this month. The model is a good starting point if the hydrological corrections included in DHM/2015/Rain do not fit your needs. The nationwide elevation model Denmark from 2007 was renamed to Denmark/Buildings to ensure naming consistency.

We have added the latest (as of early August 2015) version of the new 0.4m Danish elevation model DHM/2015 where (among other things) lakes have been flattened. The model is currently available for Eastern Denmark. More details are available at kortforsyningen. Additionally, we have put up two new models: DHM/2015/Rain and DHM/2015/Sea. They have been derived from the baseline model by adding building footprints, cutting them to the national coastline polygon and by burning the current set of hydrological corrections (DHyM/Tilpasninger) into the model. The result is a model that is much more suitable for hydrological computations through workspaces.

The watershed tool has gained some powerful features. You can now export the watersheds as a Shapefile by using the export button in the watershed information dialog. The result will be a simplified approximate version of the watershed polygon suitable for e.g. reports. The "area" field of this polygon contains the area of the original unsimplified watershed. Furthermore, you can now see the area of the watershed in the watershed information dialog (this is not yet supported for all layers).

River network downloading

Flow Accumulation layer downloads now use the specified Flow Network Detail from the user interface. Thus, the level of detail of the downloaded vector file will match the level of detail displayed on the screen. This makes it easy to download just the main rivers and tributaries by setting an appropriate detail level. As before, the segments in the downloaded file have a field specifying their flow (that is, upstream area).

Point query tool

There are two bigger changes to the point query tool:

• You can now choose a coordinate system used for locations on the map. Currently we support UTM Zones 32N and 33N as well as lat/lon.
• Ad hoc layers, generated when dragging e.g. Shapefiles into the layer menu, are now queried along with the regular layers.

You can now drag and drop Shapefiles (or a zip-file containing a Shapefile) into the layer selection menu on the left. This will import the features as a separate layer (an ad hoc layer) which allows you to quickly visualize and use reference data you might have lying around. Note that this feature isn't meant to be used for big Shapefiles, it's simply a quick in-browser way of reviewing smaller data sets. Ad hoc layers will disappear when refreshing the page.

Rank Display

For workspaces we now show the rank of overlapping segments so you can more easily order them in the order you want them applied to the model.

X/Y labels on profiles

Profiles now display an x-axis and y-axis, making it easier to work with the data.

Better support for vector files

We now support both MultiLineStrings and a number of the most common projections when importing files through drag and drop. If the projection you use for storing your data is not supported, just send us the EPSG code or some other information about the projection, and we can look into adding it.

Today we make nationwide contour maps available for SCALGO Live users in 9 countries (Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, United Kingdom, Poland, Germany, France and Iceland). We have produced the contours with an interval of 2.5 m and 50 cm. When producing the contour maps, we have developed simplification algorithms that ensure the maps are both visually attractive, good at highlighting important topographic features, and come with accuracy guarantees, so you can be sure that we have not strayed too far from the “truth” in search of visual acumen.

Read our blog if you want to learn more about the contour maps and how we produced them.

The contour maps are made available as layers under the Elevation category in the Dock and by clicking the gear icon next to the layers you can also supplement the maps with information about high and low points in the terrain. Read more in the manual.