The Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) has announced a new computer modelling service that will deliver new digital topographic information, giving greater imagery of the country’s land and water systems.

 

“The CSIRO, the Australian National University (ANU), the Bureau of Meteorology, Geoscience Australia and the Defence Imagery and Geospatial Organisation have just completed building the finest resolution national computer model of Australia’s ground surface topography and river networks,” Senator Carr said.

 

The new 30-metre resolution hydrological Digital Elevation Model incorporates rivers and streams and is the last in a series of products based on the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission data collected by NASA during a Space Shuttle mission in 2000. It provides nearly 10 times finer resolution and thus much greater detail than previous Australian Digital Elevation Models.

 

The director of the CSIRO’s Water for a Healthy Country Flagship, Dr Bill Young, said the new model is a vast improvement on previous terrain data, producing images of Australia’s topography with much greater detail and accuracy than the current model.

 

“This new model provides the best ever maps of terrain shape and water flow paths across the continent and is expected to dramatically improve our understanding of Australia’s landscape and water resources,” Dr Young said.

 

Download images and movies created from the Digital Elevation Model at http://www.scienceimage.csiro.au/mediarelease/mr11-DEM_launch.

 

Find out more about the Digital Elevation Model at http://www.csiro.au/science/One-second-SRTM-Digital-Elevation-Model.html.