Quality assessment and validation of TerraSAR-X digital surface model using LiDAR for urban areas in Jakarta

Digital Surface Models (DSMs) are highly important product obtained from either conversional measurements or from remote sensing imagery. The estimation of height modelling of the earth's surface is measured using interferometry synthetic aperture radar (InSAR). This radar technique uses phase information to provide the peak of the surface. The accuracy of the DSMs produced by InSAR depends on shadow mask of the area, layover, and the coherent difference between the images. This paper proposes a quality of DSMs derived from the InSAR method, which is from ascending paths using high resolution TerraSAR-X. In this research we generate DSMs in Urban area in Jakarta. Generating DSMs was done by the InSAR method which covers the same test area and came from one pair of ascending TerraSAR-X images. The quality level of elevation to be validated compared to validation datasets and application requirements. The comparison of the two DSMs from the ascending has been done by validating with LiDAR. The images pairs with 37 degrees incidence angle for ascending path. The results show error distribution within different terrain characteristics, which are presented using various ways including statistics, error maps and profiles. There is significant reduction in missing pixel counts due to layover, shadow and low coherences after co-registered. These include terrain characteristics, vegetation and land cover. For different slope we found accuracy to decrease with slope increase with an average standard deviation between a very low slope class and very steep slope class. The study area where we analyse is Jakarta for urban area.