Multiscale Terrain and Topographic Modelling with the Implicit TIN

The Multiscale Implicit Triangulated Irregular Network (TIN) provides a storage and access scheme for generating triangulated terrain models that adapt their content and level of detail to the requirements of the user. The scheme combines storage of data representing the terrain surface, and two and three dimensional terrain features, with a retrieval and triangulation procedure that generates a constrained Delaunay triangulation at run time. The feature content and level of detail may be specified by the user, thereby providing a flexible facility that adapts to the requirements of a wide range of applications, whether global or local, exploratory or precise. This paper provides an overview of the scheme and illustrates its application for a variety of queries requiring multiscale representations.