An improved method for 3D modeling of complex terrain

Considering the advantages and disadvantages of inverse distance weighted method (IDW) and the terrain modeling particularity in water resources and hydropower engineering, this paper presents an improved method called property-control IDW (PCIDW) for 3D modeling of complex terrain. This method regards property of the sampling points and the unknown points to be estimated as a parameter to control whether the sampling points involves in modeling. PCIDW can better use the effective property information of the sampling points to estimate the unknown points accurately. The quantitative estimation formulas are provided. PCIDW was applied in a water resources and hydropower engineering. The results show that PCIDW is able to control the intercross influence between river and mountain in complex terrain modeling. The terrain model established by PCIDW meets the engineering demands better.