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Researchers at Australian research house, CSIRO, are building a three-dimensional computer model of Australia’s ground surface topography.

Researchers at Australian research house, CSIRO, are building a three-dimensional computer model of Australia’s ground surface topography at scales never seen before.

Dr John Gallant, CSIRO researcher and project leader, said: 'The new Digital Elevation Model (DEM) provides nearly 10 times finer resolution and much greater detail than previous models.

'It dramatically improves our understanding of Australia’s landscape and this will transform the management of Australia’s water resources.'

The DEM will give the Australian Bureau of Meteorology a reliable definition of stream networks and catchment boundaries needed to calculate water movement through the landscape.

Based on the Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission (SRTM) data collected by NASA during a Space Shuttle mission in 2000, the new one-second (~30m resolution) DEM is a vast improvement on the previous nine-second (~250m resolution) version.

The SRTM data has been available since 2005, but its use was limited by reflections from areas of dense vegetation cover, which misrepresented the pathways for water flow in the landscape.

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