DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17538186
title: DEMIX GIS Database Version 4

description: DEMIX Database version 4

Data created for paper.  If using the database please cite both it and the paper.        



Guth, P.L.; Trevisani, S.; Grohmann, C.H.; Lindsay, J.B.; Reuter, H.I. Benchmarking Elevation Plus Land Surface Parameters Finds FathomDEM and Copernicus DEM Win as Best Global DEMs. Remote Sens. 2025, 17, 3919. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs17233919


This database supports the work of the Digital Elevation Model Intercomparison eXperiment (DEMIX) working group (Strobl and others, 2021) and particularly the two previous comparison efforts (Guth and others, 2024; Bielski and others, 2024).  

Four files have the database tables in CSV format.



Difference distributions for elevation, slope, and surface roughness.  These provide continuity with Bielski and others (2024) and Guth and others (2024}; for readers who want, it has the statistics like RMSE and LE90 for elevation and two LSPs, as well as the signed mean and median differences.

FUV for a mixed suite of LSPs chosen to sample the full range of LSPs calculated from DEMs.  These provide a better rankings of the test DEMs compared with the difference distributions, and provide an estimate of the robustness of LSPs and suggest that some should be used with caution (Guth and others, 2024, 2025).

FUV for the partial derivatives used for slope, aspect, and curvature.

FUV for the suite of integrated curvature measures (Minar and others, 2020. 


This version adds to CopDEM, ALOS AW3D30, and FABDEM:



FathomDEM (Uhe and others, 2025)

GEDTM 1.2—this is the “best” version of 1.2 (there are at least two others, which have no scaling for the elevations, and in some cases 0.9 arc second spacing; 0.9” is about 30 yards or 90 feet) (https://s3.opengeohub.org/global/dtm/v1.2/gedtm_rf_m_30m_s_20060101_20151231_go_epsg.4326.3855_v1.2.tif.  In general this DTM is not better than the CopDEM DSM, even when both are compared to a reference DTM, and does not produce good land surface parameters.


Version 4 does not consider:



Low altitude coastal DEMs; for those use version 3 (https://zenodo.org/records/13331458 ).  Beware that in low elevation, low slope environments, none of the one arc second DEMs perform well.

SRTM, NASADEM, TanDEM-X or ASTER DEM; for those use version 3 (https://zenodo.org/records/13331458 ).  Beware that there are no good reasons to use any of these DEMs, unless you have a very unusual or unique set of requirements.

EDTM or several older versions of GEDTM, which provide an interesting look at the development of a DTM.  For those use version 3.5 (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17247343 ).


This database contains the following tables



Four CSV files with definitions for the fields in the other tables.  These start with “demix_criteria”

Four CSV files with the main data tables.  These include “DEMIX_DB” and the date the table was created.



Start with UTM to emphasize test tiles defined by projected coordinates

 Include the data the database was created



 One CSV file listing HRDEM source files, with names of the national mapping agency DTMs used to create the reference DTMs.


Licenses for the DEMs used to create the database:




Global DEM
Download location
License Statement
License Link


ALOS World 3D AW3D30 v 3.2
 https://www.eorc.jaxa.jp/ALOS/en/aw3d30/index.htm
The data used for this paper have been provided by AW3D of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
 https://earth.jaxa.jp/en/data/policy/


Copernicus DEM GLO30, GLO90
https://finder.creodias.eu/  
© DLR e.V. 2010-2014 and © Airbus Defence and Space GmbH 2014-2018 provided under COPERNICUS by the European Union and ESA; all rights reserved.
 https://docs.sentinel-hub.com/api/latest/static/files/data/dem/resources/license/License-COPDEM-30.pdf


FABDEM (v1-2)
 https://data.bris.ac.uk/data/dataset/s5hqmjcdj8yo2ibzi9b4ew3sn
Creative Commons "CC BY-NC-SA 4.0" license.
 


FATHOM DEM


 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14523356

 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14511570

Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International
 


GEDTM,EDTM
 https://zenodo.org/records/15689805  https://zenodo.org/records/7676373
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode




 

References:

·         Bielski, C.; López-Vázquez, C.; Grohmann, C.H.; Guth. P.L.; Hawker, L.; Gesch, D.; Trevisani, S.; Herrera-Cruz, V.; Riazanoff, S.; Corseaux, A.; Reuter, H.; Strobl, P., 2024. Novel approach for ranking DEMs: Copernicus DEM improves one arc second open global topography. IEEE Transactions on Geoscience & Remote Sensing.  vol. 62, pp. 1-22, 2024, Art no. 4503922, https://doi.org/10.1109/TGRS.2024.3368015

·         Guth, P.L.; Trevisani, S.; Grohmann, C.H.; Lindsay, J.; Gesch, D.; Hawker, L.; Bielski, C. Ranking of 10 Global One-Arc-Second DEMs Reveals Limitations in Terrain Morphology Representation. Remote Sens. 2024, 16, 3273. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs16173273

·         Guth, P.L.; Van Niekerk, A.; Grohmann, C.H.; Muller, J.-P.; Hawker, L.; Florinsky, I.V.; Gesch, D.; Reuter, H.I.; Herrera-Cruz, V.; Riazanoff, S.; López-Vázquez, C.; Carabajal, C.C.; Albinet, C.; Strobl, P. Digital Elevation Models: Terminology and Definitions. Remote Sens. 2021, 13, 3581. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs13183581

·         Minár, J., Ian S. Evans, Marián Jenčo, 2020, A comprehensive system of definitions of land surface (topographic) curvatures, with implications for their application in geoscience modelling and prediction, Earth-Science Reviews, Volume 211, 103414, ISSN 0012-8252, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2020.103414

·         Strobl, P.A.; Bielski, C.; Guth, P.L.; Grohmann, C.H.; Muller, J.P.; López-Vázquez, C.; Gesch, D.B.; Amatulli, G.; Riazanoff, S.; Carabajal, C. The Digital Elevation Model Intercomparison eXperiment DEMIX, a community based approach at global DEM benchmarking. Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spat. Inf. Sci. 2021, XLIII-B4-2021, 395–400. https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-archives-XLIII-B4-2021-395-2021

·         Uhe, P., Lucas, C., Hawker, L., Brine, M., Wilkinson, H., Cooper, A., & Sampson, C. (2025). FathomDEM: an improved global terrain map using a hybrid vision transformer model. Environmental Research Letters, 20(3), 034002.  https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ada972