DEM

Question

Hello,

I'm a graduate student and trying to do flow and terrain analysis for a watershed. 
I converted DEM to TIN and from the resulting TIN to raster. When I compared my final raster to the DEM, the value fields appear to be same for both.

I am wondering if the procedure (DEM to TIN to raster) is correct? What other possible ways can I process the DEM for my analysis? Can I just use the DEM
as it is?

Thanks in advance for any reply.

Cheers, 
Ruby

RyanFanani · Answer

A DEM (digital elevation model) is a raster that represents elevations.

For terrain processing for hydrology, start with the DEM and go from there. I suggest downloading ArcHydro. You can get it via the HEC-GeoHMS installation http://www.hec.usace.army.mil/software/hec-geohms/download.html. HEC-GeoHMS has some terrain processing tools also, some of the same functionality as ArcHydro, but simplified. HEC-GeoHMS is intended to manipulate the GIS layers to eventually export to HEC-HMS for hydrology modeling outside of ArcMap.

Thanks for your explanation 🙂

MarkBoucher · Answer

A DEM (digital elevation model) is a raster that represents elevations.

For terrain processing for hydrology, start with the DEM and go from there. I suggest downloading ArcHydro. You can get it via the HEC-GeoHMS installation http://www.hec.usace.army.mil/software/hec-geohms/download.html. HEC-GeoHMS has some terrain processing tools also, some of the same functionality as ArcHydro, but simplified. HEC-GeoHMS is intended to manipulate the GIS layers to eventually export to HEC-HMS for hydrology modeling outside of ArcMap.