An alternative approach to transverse and profile terrain curvature

Well-established methods used in its measurement compute an index of plan or profile curvature for every single cell of a digital elevation model (DEM). The interpretation of these outputs may be delicate, especially when selected locations have to be analyzed.

Furthermore, they involve a high level of simplification, contrasting with the complex and multiscalar nature of the surface curvature itself. In this paper, we present a new method to assess vertical transverse and profile curvature combining real-scale visualization and the possibility to measure these two terrain derivatives over a large range of scales. To this purpose, we implemented a GIS tool that extracts longitudinal and transverse elevation profiles from a high-resolution DEM.