Pluggable Terrain Module - Moving Digital Terrain Modelling to a Distributed Geoprocessing Environment

Reliable digital terrain modelling necessarily needs to be based upon a set of rules which first prescribe how to discretise the continuous terrain surface, and second define the assumptions determining the subsequent interpolation. Unresolved problems in automated DTM analysis are mostly due to a failure of today’s approach to fully appreciate the implications of these rules. The functional limitations imposed by monolithic GISs are identified as a major reason for this failure. The Pluggable Terrain Module (PTM) presented in this paper is proposed to overcome these drawbacks by using a modular approach. The basic idea is to move the processing of terrain information from GISs to the PTM; communication with other software components is specified by a set of interfaces, shifting terrain modelling towards distributed and interoperable geoprocessing. Based on the notions of the OpenGIS Geodata Model (OGM), the PTM design is proposed and its implications and benefits to terrain modelling are discussed.