The effects of data reduction on LiDAR-based digital elevation models

LiDAR data enables highly accurate terrain representations, however, various applications are hampered by data handling efficiency; specifically lengthy processing times. To address this, both point density reductions and the use of various resolution grids are compared as data reduction methods to test their effects on the accuracy and handling efficiency of the derived Digital Elevation Model (DEM). A series of point densities of 1%, 10%, 25%, 50% and 75% were interpolated along a range of horizontal resolutions (1-, 2-, 3-, 4-, 5-, 10-, and 30- m). Results indicate that resolution reduction provides the most efficient DEMs in terms of their data handling. DEMs generated at a 3 m resolution using all of the data points deviated less than 6% from the 1mDEM100%, while significantly only taking 10% of the processing time. Resolution reduction provided sufficient accuracies for varying terrain complexities