Accuracy assessment of DEM from UAV and tanDEM-x imagery

Abstract

Digital Elevation Model (DEM) is now becoming a common method for modelling the earth surface for various purposes. It is becoming more so with the widespread use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) for data capture. With a similar purpose to the use of UAV, TanDEM-X satellite images are also able to capture the information about the earth surface. It would therefore be interesting to compare the accuracies of both methods and that became the aim of this paper. The DEM from UAV was generated using Agisoft PhotoScan software. Using ArcGIS, the study made the comparison based on the elevation data extracted from verification points and structure of Triangulation Irregular Network (TIN). The result showed that the DEM extracted using UAV had a better accuracy compared to TanDEM-X product. Expectedly, both are positively correlated with R2 = 0.7992 and therefore both can be used with reliable accuracy.