I am listing some of the acronyms used in our work and had to stop to think about whether to list these together or separately:
- DEM: Digital Elevation Model
- DSM: Digital Surface Model
- DTM: Digital Terrain Model
In some circles they seem synonymous, in others they seem to have distinct meanings.
Is there an agreed-upon definition for each that enables them to be distinguished?
Best Answer
In my experience, DEM is most of the time used as a generic term for DSMs and DTMs. I think this image on Wikipedia depicts the differences between DSMs and DTMs well:
A different definition is found in [Li et al., DIGITAL TERRAIN MODELING - Principles and Methodology]: