About – What's new

New Danish Elevation Model

Apr 18, 2019

A few days ago SDFE released an updated version of the Danish elevation model. The updates come from a newly acquired point cloud covering Fyn and Djursland primarily, but the model has also changed elsewhere. The complete model is now available for use in SCALGO Live under the name Denmark/2018 - you can find it in the library. The Denmark/2015 model is still available and our analyses have not (yet) been updated. You can create workspaces from the Denmark/2018 model using the "Existing Model" button in the workspace creation menu. You will automatically get the hydrological corrections in your workspace.

(left) An area south of Odense from the national Danish elevation model from 2015. (right) The area in the updated model reflects recent developments in the area.



Work with gradients in the profile widget

Apr 12, 2019

You can now work with gradients of your workspace terrain edits. You can set a constant gradient across the length of the feature and you can get information about the gradient of edges adjacent to each vertex. You can now also right-click to fix individual vertices. This allows you to efficiently change the slope of sub-paths.

Denmark: updated national computation

We have refreshed the Danish national analysis using GeoDanmark data (e.g. building footprints and hydrological corrections) from February 2019.

Flood risk screening from rivers and flow paths

Mar 25, 2019

We are proud to announce the Danish release of our new SCALGO Live add-on module to estimate flood risk from water flowing in streams, rivers, ditches and along roads. In fact, you can use the new module to estimate the flood risk of any flow rate and along any flow path in the high-resolution Danish elevation model (260 billion elevation cells). The feature is fully integrated into SCALGO Live with both a national analysis and powerful workspace options for working with water flows both in streams and on roads. If you are a Danish user then contact us for more on obtaining access to the new module. If you are a user outside Denmark then stay tuned, we are working hard to release this in more countries.

You can read more about the new functionality in the manual and in the full release announcement.

New workspace tool: Raise and lower terrain uniformly

Mar 15, 2019

We have added a new terrain edit tool for workspaces. The tool allows you to draw a path or a polygon and raise or lower all parts of the terrain covered by the object by a fixed amount. This is useful for e.g. modeling water tubes in emergency response situations where the water tube follows the terrain instead of being set at a fixed absolute elevation.

Example of a 1 meter tall water tube rolled out on a shore. The profile window shows the original terrain (blue line in the graph) and how the water tube (red line in the graph) follows the original terrain, but 1 meters higher.

Importing LandXML TINs, LAS point clouds

Feb 22, 2019

We have extended import support with several popular file types. These include TINs (triangulated meshes) stored in LandXML or Shapefiles, exportable from BIM/CAD software (such as Trimble Novapoint, AutoCAD Civil 3D and Bentley InRoads/PowerCivil), as well as point clouds stored as LAS files. These formats are supported for constructing workspaces, but more importantly for including new data into existing workspaces. This allows, for example, constructing a workspace on a national model for context, and then importing a newly planned road or re-designed terrain on top.

Example of a new road modelled as a TIN imported into a SCALGO Live workspace. © Statens Vegvesen, Norway

You can read more about the extended import support in the manual.

Download format selection for polygon downloads

It is now possible to set default formats to be used when downloading data from SCALGO Live in the bottom of your account page. The selected vector format will be used when downloading upstream polygons using the watershed tool, and exporting depression polygons from the Depression Map. Previously these would always be exported as Shapefiles.

The selected defaults for vector, raster and aerial data will also apply for normal downloads, but you can still change away from the default in the download dialog as before.

Denmark: updated national computation

We have refreshed the national analysis using GeoDanmark data from November 2018. We now get the hydrological corrections directly from GeoDanmark. This implies that the changes to the hydrological corrections made before November 2018 are reflected in this computation.

New model in Sweden

Dec 19, 2018

Recently, the Swedish mapping authority, Lantmäteriet, released the Laserdata Skog point cloud as open data. We have made this dataset available for our SCALGO Live Sweden users. You can find it in the library through the "Add" button in the bottom left of your screen.

The current dataset covers only a small part of the country. It will be updated regularly by Lantmäteriet and we will also keep it updated in SCALGO Live. It has about 1-2 points per square meter, and is made available as a 1 m raster in SCALGO Live. In comparison, the national Swedish model is a 2 m raster.

A comparison of the national model and the model derived from the Laserdata Skog point cloud.

Naturally, the data is also available for download and for use in workspaces. If you want to use it in a workspace, use the "Existing Model" option in the workspace creation dialog. After selecting your region you can then click the green pencil next to the elevation model to create your workspace.

You can read more about Laserdata Skog in the manual.

Side slopes on workspace features

Dec 5, 2018

By popular demand it is now possible to create paths and areas with non-vertical side slopes (banks) in your workspace. Use this new feature to make your terrain edits look more realistic and get closer to the final design of your solution. Interesting use-cases for this new feature include:

  • Estimate the surface area required by a new channel or retention basin including the extra width taken up by the banks.
  • Achieve more accurate volume estimates for basins.
  • Bring more realistic and better-looking project proposals and screenings to stake holders and the public.
  • Improve performance in subsequent processing, e.g. in hydro-dynamic modeling.
The user has created a channel and a retention basin to increase the volume of water that can be stored in an area close to a major road. Both the retention basin and the channel have a side slope of 30 degrees.

See the manual for details on how to add side slopes to your features.

Bigger workspaces

We have increased the workspace size limit significantly, by factor of 5 in most cases.

Updated Orthophotos in Denmark

The new Danish orthophotos from spring 2018 are now available for viewing and download in SCALGO Live. Find them in the library.

A tram on the new tramway in Aarhus, Denmark.

Drag and drop enhancements

Sep 24, 2018

You can now specify a boundary polygon for workspace creation and downloads by dragging a Shapefile or GeoJSON file onto the creation/download dialog. Drag and drop styling has also been improved throughout the UI.

Dragging a shapefile into the download dialog imports the shapefile as a download boundary.

Download and vectors

We have released a number of updates related to downloading data from SCALGO Live:

  • We now support DXF and GeoPackage for downloading vector data.
  • Furthermore you can now control the coordinate system of the downloaded data. You can choose the coordinate system from the download dialog. If you pick a new coordinate system (from the top right menu) this setting will also be reflected in the download dialog.
  • There is a new download option in the Flash Flood Map: building information. If you choose this option you will download building footprints annotated with information about water in depressions neighboring the buildling. See the manual for more information.
The user has chosen GeoPackage as the Vector download format. The reprojection options are available in the download dialog and in the user menu.

Subsurface in sea-level rise computations

Subsurface edits in workspaces are now included in the sea-level rise computations. They were previously ignored.

In a workspace a dike has been made around a city. A depression inside the protected area has been connected to the coast. The water rises in this depression through the pipe.

Denmark: National Computation

The national sea-level rise computation has been updated to use the national set of hydrological corrections as subsurface structures. This implies the analysis is no longer based on the Denmark/2105/Sea model, however the model will remain available in SCALGO Live for use in other tools. All computations have been updated to use newer GeoDanmark buildings (accquired from Kortforsyningen 6th of April 2018).

Swedish contour maps

Sep 24, 2018

We are proud to announce the release of a nationwide Swedish contour map based on the full high-resolution (2m) national elevation model. It is available for immediate viewing and download in SCALGO Live.

The contour map comes in different equidistances and is designed to be cartographically pleasing and have a manageable size, and at the same time provide hard guarantees on how much each individual contours deviates from the elevation model in the x, y and z axis. The map has been generated based on the SCALGO technology that was used to generate the national Danish contour map.

2.5-meter contours around Långsjön, Sweden.

Subsurface basins and sewage drains in workspaces

Sep 2, 2018

We have added a new workspace tool that lets you model a subsurface basin or sewage drain in a point. The point is modelled as a sink of a user-specified finite volume, any flow entering the sink will stay in the sink until the full volume (service level) associated with the sink has been consumed. This volume can either be typed in manually or set to an event-specific runoff volume. The latter is done using the watershed of the sink point to define the area and the flash flood map rain slider to define the event. See the manual for more information about how to use the new tool.

In this scenario we have modelled sewage drains at the northern and southern entrance (black crosses) to the large flooded area to the right of the figure. These have been modelled with a capacity of 10.000 cubic meters and have reduced the flooding from the blue area to the purple area. Furthermore we are in the process of placing a new drain (red point). We are using the area of the watershed (in green) along with the currently set rain event (through the rain slider) to set the volume that can be stored in the point.