Patent ID: 7783612

Claim:
A method for generating an optimized terrain database for at least one region, comprising: designating a first region as a test region; receiving first and second sets of terrain data for the test region, wherein each set of terrain data includes a plurality of data points, the first set of terrain data collected utilizing a first terrain data collection method and including a first quantity of data points, the second set of terrain data collected utilizing a second terrain data collection method and including a second quantity of data points, the first quantity greater than the second quantity; correlating data points in the first set of terrain data with data points in the second set of terrain data that are in substantially the same location; determining elevation error margins for the first set of terrain data based on the data point correlations; establishing a safety margin for the test region based on the elevation error margins determined for the correlated points within the first set of terrain data; applying the safety margin to the remaining data points in the first set of terrain data that have not been correlated to data points in the second set of terrain data, to create an optimized terrain model for the entire first test region; and applying the safety margin to a set of terrain data for a second region having terrain quality characteristics similar to terrain quality characteristics of the first test region to create an optimized terrain database for the second region, the set of terrain data for the second region collected utilizing the first terrain data collection method.