Computer-aided tools appropriate to architecture, engineering and construction have been Summarised, including digital terrain modelling (DTM), computer-aided design and draughting (CADD) and database management systems (DBMS). DTM and CADD techniques have been applied to simulating the hydraulic filling of tailings, or mine waste dams. A relational DBMS was used to structure and manage filling and terrain data relevant to hydraulic tailings disposal at the Wheal Jane mine in Cornwall.

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The presented thesis deals with assessment of landscaping and with the opportunities for making use of natural relief during setting up of landscape gardens. The assessment has been done based on studies of the relevant matter in model locations, then the acquired facts have been generalized. Landscape gardens form an indispensable part of the landscape as such. Gardens mix, in a specific way and inseparably, influences of natural environment with anthropogenic impacts. The natural environment changes into landscape gardens mainly by means of diverse forms of relief. At the same time, relief was not just passively taken as a basis for starting a park, it was actively being changed, spending not a small amount of money and effort. What is typical of terrain changes in landscape gardens is that these changes, striking to whatever degree, were meant to be hidden to viewers, and that they copied natural lines and shapes. Geographical research topics in landscape gardens concentrate mainly on finding to what degree the natural relief was used and changed, and what impact it had on the form and creation of the parks. In the presented work methods leading to a thorough understanding of terrain changes were used. The main part of the work was to analyze maps in GIS systems, to study historical documents,...

The accuracy of computer-based ground vehicle durability and ride quality simulations depends on accurate representation of road surface topology as an excitation to vehicle dynamics simulation software, since most of the excitation input to a vehicle as it traverses terrain is provided by the surface topology. It is not computationally efficient to utilise physically measured terrain topology for these simulations since extremely large data sets would be required to represent terrain of all desired types. Moreover, performing repeated simulations on the same set of measured data would not provide a random character typical of real world usage. There exist several methods of synthesising terrain data through the use of stochastic or mathematical models in order to capture such physical properties of measured terrain as roughness, bank angle and grade. In first part of this work, the autoregressive model and the Markov chain model have been applied to generate synthetic two-dimensional terrain profiles. The synthesised terrain profiles generated are expected to capture the statistical properties of the measured data. A methodology is then proposed; to assess the performance of these models of terrain in capturing the statistical properties of the measured terrain. This is done through the application of several statistical property tests to the measured and synthesized terrain profiles. The second part of this work describes the procedure that has been followed to assess the performance of these models in capturing the vehicle component fatigue-inducing characteristics of the measured terrain, by predicting suspension component fatigue life based on the loading conditions obtained from the measured terrain and the corresponding synthesized terrain. The terrain model assessment methodology presented in this work can be applied to any model of terrain, serving to identify which terrain models are suited to which type of terrain. / Master of Science

Analysis of digital elevation models (DEMs) by means of geomorphometry provides means of recognising fractures and characterising the morphotectonics of an area in a quantitative way. The objective of the thesis is to develop numerical methods and a consistent GIS methodology for tectonic geomorphology and apply it to test sites. Based on the study of landforms related to faults, geomorphological characteristics are translated into mathematical and numerical algorithms. The methodology is based on general geomorphometry. In this study, the basic geometric attributes (elevation, slope, aspect and curvatures) are complemented with the automatic extraction of ridge and valley lines and surface specific points. Evan’s univariate and bivariate methodology of general geomorphometry is extended with texture (spatial) analysis methods such as trend, autocorrelation, spectral, wavelet and network analysis. Digital terrain modelling is carried out by means of (1) general geomorphometry, (2) digital drainage network analysis, (3) digital image processing, (4) lineament extraction and analysis, (5) spatial and statistical analysis and (6) DEM specific digital methods such as shaded relief models, digital cross-sections and 3D surface modelling. Geological data of various sources and scales are integrated in a GIS database. Interpretation of multi-source information confirmed the findings of digital morphotectonic investigation. A simple shear model with principal displacement zone in the NE-SW direction can explain most of the morphotectonic features associated with structures identified by geological and digital morphotectonic investigations in the Kali Basin. Comparison of the results of the DTA with the known geology from NW Greece indicated that the major faults correspond to clear lineaments. Thus, DTA of an area in the proposed way forms a useful tool to identify major and minor structures covering large areas. In this thesis, numerical methods for drainage network extraction and aspect analysis have been developed and applied to tectonic geomorphology.

This thesis is concerned with development of a terrain model using Gaussian Processes to support the automation of open-pit mines. Information can be provided from a variety of sources including GPS, laser scans and manual surveys. The information is then fused together into a single representation of the terrain together with a measure of uncertainty of the estimated model. The model is also used to detect and label specific features in the terrain. In the context of mining, theses features are edges known as toes and crests. A combination of clustering and classification using supervised learning detects and labels these regions. Data gathered from production iron ore mines in Western Australia and a farm in Marulan outside Sydney is used to demonstrate and verify the ability of Gaussian Processes to estimate a model of the terrain. The estimated terrain model is then used for detecting features of interest.Results show that the Gaussian Process correctly estimates the terrain and uncertainties, and provide a good representation of the area. Toes and crests are also successfully identified and labelled.

No / We propose a new dynamic simulation scheme for large-scale flood hazard modelling and prevention. The approach consists of a number of core parts: Digital terrain modelling with GIS data, Nona-tree space partitions (NTSP), Automatic River object recognition and registration, and a flood spreading model. The digital terrain modelling method allows the creation of a geometric real terrain model for augmented 3D environments with very large GIS data, and it can also use information gathered from aviation and satellite images with a ROAM algorithm. A spatial image segmentation scheme is described for river and flood identification and for a 3D terrain map of flooding region growth and visualisation. The region merging is then implemented by adopting Flood Region Spreading Algorithm (FRSA). Compared with the conventional methods, our approach has the advantages of being capable of realistically visualising the flooding in geometrically-real 3D environments, of handling dynamic flood behaviour in real-time and of dealing with very large-scale data modelling and visualisation.

As curvas de nível são extremamente úteis na solução dos problemas da engenharia e algumas áreas de aplicação são: topografia, exploração de minérios e petróleo, estudo de campos magnéticos, metrologia e outros. Tem-se recorrido ao auxílio do computador para desenhar automaticamente esse tipo de mapas e são muitos os programas desenvolvidos com essa finalidade. Escolhemos como ponto de partida de nosso estudo um método, de comprovadas qualidades, desenvolvido por Hiroshi Akima: \"A Method of bivariate interpolation and smooth surface fitting for irregularly distributed data points\". A nossa contribuição a esse trabalho consiste na redução do tempo de computação, na melhoria da qualidade do desenho e na adaptação do sistema para uso em microcomputadores, com a consequente redução do custo da produção de mapas.Com o programa de Akima não fornece rotinas de desenho, nós implementamos uma com esse propósito e esta é uma outra contribuição desta tese. / Contour maps are extremely useful in the solution of engineering problems and some areas of applications are: survey, minerals and petroleum exploration, study of magnetic fields , metereology and others. The computer has been used for drawing automatically such maps and there are already several programs developed with this purpose. We have selected as starting point of our study, a method with proved qualities, developed by Hiroshi Akima, entitled: \"A method of bivariate interpolation and smooth surface fitting for irregularly distributed data points\". Our contribution to the work of Akima consists in reducing the computing time, improving the visual aspect of the map and in adapting the system to the use in microcomputers, with the consequent reduction of the cost of map\'s production. Since Akima\'s program does not provide any routine for drawing maps, we further implement one for such purpose and this is another contribution of this thesis.

As curvas de nível são extremamente úteis na solução dos problemas da engenharia e algumas áreas de aplicação são: topografia, exploração de minérios e petróleo, estudo de campos magnéticos, metrologia e outros. Tem-se recorrido ao auxílio do computador para desenhar automaticamente esse tipo de mapas e são muitos os programas desenvolvidos com essa finalidade. Escolhemos como ponto de partida de nosso estudo um método, de comprovadas qualidades, desenvolvido por Hiroshi Akima: \"A Method of bivariate interpolation and smooth surface fitting for irregularly distributed data points\". A nossa contribuição a esse trabalho consiste na redução do tempo de computação, na melhoria da qualidade do desenho e na adaptação do sistema para uso em microcomputadores, com a consequente redução do custo da produção de mapas.Com o programa de Akima não fornece rotinas de desenho, nós implementamos uma com esse propósito e esta é uma outra contribuição desta tese. / Contour maps are extremely useful in the solution of engineering problems and some areas of applications are: survey, minerals and petroleum exploration, study of magnetic fields , metereology and others. The computer has been used for drawing automatically such maps and there are already several programs developed with this purpose. We have selected as starting point of our study, a method with proved qualities, developed by Hiroshi Akima, entitled: \"A method of bivariate interpolation and smooth surface fitting for irregularly distributed data points\". Our contribution to the work of Akima consists in reducing the computing time, improving the visual aspect of the map and in adapting the system to the use in microcomputers, with the consequent reduction of the cost of map\'s production. Since Akima\'s program does not provide any routine for drawing maps, we further implement one for such purpose and this is another contribution of this thesis.

One of the main problems of current physical geodesy is the unification of local height systems and the creation of the unified global vertical reference frame, whose primary definition constant will be the geopotential value of W0 on the level surface, such as geoid. This problem encounters several pitfalls, such as different types of physical heights used in the world, ways of eliminating the effects of tides on the shape of the Earth's body. The first parts of the thesis describe the theoretical foundations concerning the description of the Earth's gravitational field, the basics of height theory and the solution of the boundary value problems used in geodesy, together with the solution of the Hotine's and Stokes' integral by convolution. Due to the fact that the data of directly measured gravity acceleration for the territory of the Czechia and the Slovakia are not freely available with sufficient coverage, these data were replaced by gravity disturbances calculated from the Global Gravity Model of the Earth. To improve the data obtained from geopotential models, so-called residual terrain modelling was used. It is a spectral combination of gravity field models with relevant Earth's gravitational field quantities, which are obtained by modeling from a digital terrain model and a height model that represents the mean value of topography. The combination of these data consists of calculating those frequencies of the gravitational signal from the digital terrain model that are not a part of the signal obtained from geopotential models that in general have a lower spatial resolution. Two methods were used to connect the local height systems of the Czechia and the Slovakia. The first method was to use the solution of Molodensky's problem. The second method used is originally a method developed to test geopotential models. Both methods were tested on a set of measuring points (GNSS/levelling points).