About – What's new

New flash flood map computation available with watershed download

Feb 7, 2016

The national flash flood map computation has been updated (see message below). We have also added a new feature; the watershed maps for the flash flood map rain events (i.e. the 10mm, 20mm, ..., 10cm watershed maps) are now available for download.

DHM/2015 variants and sea-levels now available nationwide

Jan 27, 2016

We have updated the Denmark/2015/Rain and Denmark/2015/Sea to have national coverage. We have also released the national Sea-Level analysis. All of the new elevation models are available for both workspace creation and download. For important information about hydrological correction, please see our note.

A 70 cm sea-level rise on the island of Lolland on the DHM/2015/Rain model (purple) and the older DHM/Rain model (blue). The older model does not correctly resolve the narrow dike protecting the coastal area from the sea.

Important bugfix to the flash flood map

We have identified an issue in the flash flood map which resulted in some basins not receiving contributions from flooded watersheds upstream of them. We have fixed this on our backend and all workspaces will get the updated flash flood map when they are recomputed. We are also updating the national computation and this will be rolled out during the next week. (Edit Feb 7th: The new national computation is now available).

DHM/2015 now available nationwide

Jan 6, 2016

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.

Recomputation time of a 7 square kilometer workspace with default settings on the DHM/2015/Rain model.
The new national DHM model in SCALGO Live.

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

Hydrology on the new DHM/2015 model now available

Oct 31, 2015

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.

The watershed (green) and downstream path (red) of a location in the DHM/2015/Rain model.
Comparing a section of a river network as extracted from the DHM/2015/Rain model (purple) and the older DHM/Rain model (blue). In this area, the new model correctly resolves the stream ensuring the water takes a correct path downstream. Both partial river networks are shown here visualized on top of the DHM/2015/Rain model.

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

A 70 cm sea-level rise on the island of Lolland on the DHM/2015/Rain model (purple) and the older DHM/Rain model (blue). The older model does not correctly resolve the narrow dike protecting the coastal area from the sea.

New DHM/2015 Model - now with buildings

Aug 31, 2015

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.

Frederiksberg Gardens in Copenhagen, from the new DHM/2015/Buildings model.

New DHM Model

Aug 17, 2015

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.

TOP LEFT: View of a lake in the previous version of the DHM/2015 model. Note the triangulation artefacts over the flat surface. TOP RIGHT: In the new DHM/2015 model the surface of the lake has been flattened. BOTTOM LEFT: View of the baseline DHM/2015 model. BOTTOM RIGHT: The new DHM/2015/Rain model has both building footprints and hydrological corrections included.


Watershed Tool

May 1, 2015

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.

Ad hoc layers

Apr 1, 2015

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.

Nationwide contour maps for all countries

Jan 15, 2023

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.

Example of 2.5-meter and 0.5-meter contours in a hilly area.