Assessment of the vertical accuracy of SRTM-1 data over the territory of Poland using the runway method

The aim of this project was to estimate the accuracy of the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) digital elevation model over the territory of the Republic of Poland, using the centerline cross-sections of runways as reference data. This method is known as the runway method. The statistical investigations were carried out based on the height differences between the SRTM and the reference data. For this purpose, 22 sections of the SRTM with 1 arcsecond of spatial resolution (SRTM-1″) and profiles of 30 runways were used. Data processing was performed using ArcGIS (Esri) software package. The study found that the SRTM-1″ had a –3.65 m magnitude elevation bias. The standard deviation and root-mean-square error (RMSE) of the elevation differences between the SRTM and the reference data reached the level of 1.88 m and 4.14 m, respectively. The obtained results are consistent with the investigations of the SRTM-3″ model conducted by other authors for the area of Poland and other countries. Overall, it can be confirmed that the SRTM-3″ model performs significantly better over flat areas than the SRTM-1″ in terms of RMSE of the vertical accuracy.