Digital terrain model of the watercourses Elbe and Lower Havel (Germany), DGM-W Elbe 2022 project

The high-resolution digital terrain model (DTM) of the waterways Elbe and Lower Havel (DGM-W Elbe 2022) comprises both the terrain on land and the bottom of rivers, channels and lakes.

It was produced and published by Germany’s Federal Institute of Hydrology (BfG), on behalf of the River Basin Community Elbe (RBC Elbe, FGG Elbe). The work was supported by the German Federal Waterways and Shipping Administration (WSV) and the surveying offices and water management administrations of six German states - Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Brandenburg, Lower Saxony, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Schleswig-Holstein. Recent homogeneous geotopographic data of the Elbe watercourse and its historical floodplain are required for a number of applications in the fields of water management, hydraulic engineering and ecology. Use cases of the data include water level forecasting, execution of European Community Directives such as the Floods Directive (2007/60/EG) and WFD (2000/60/EG), or hydraulic and morphodynamic modelling.

The data cover both the area around the inland water stretches of the Elbe from the Czech-German border to the village of Zollenspieker (part of the city of Hamburg) and the Lower Havel waterway from the town of Rathenow to its confluence with the Elbe. Since the dataset has a large coverage of 4,043 km², it is split into 62 sections. They were either labelled *HW in case of flood relevant areas (in German: “hochwasser-relevante Gebiete”) or *AU in case of historical floodplains (in German: “Altauengebiete”). Financing was divided according to these categories: In the HW areas, the project was co-funded by BfG, the WSV and the federal states, while in the AU areas, BfG covered all project costs.

For each section we provide hillshade (*HS), height maps (*NHN), slope (*sl) and source flags (*sc).

The data are available as GeoTIFF-files (resolution 1 meter);

Coordinate reference frame: ETRS89.DREF91.R16;

Coordinate projection: UTM Zone 33N;

EPSG-Code: 25833;

Height reference system: DHHN2016, national vertical reference frame in Germany (2022).

The DGM-W is based on the combination of multiple datasets measured by airborne laser scanning, echo sounder data and bathymetric laser scanning. The survey methods in detail are as follows:

1) Airborne laser scanning (ALS) Elbe 06 January 2022 - 18 March 2022 (source flags 10; 14-99),

2) Airborne laser scanning (ALS) Havel 20 to 22 December 2021 (source flags 11-13),

3) Multibeam and multi-channel echo sounder 2021/2022 (source flags 7000-8999),

4) Multibeam and multi-channel echo sounder 2020 and older (source flags 1000-6999),

5) Bathymetric laser scanning 24 to 26 August 2018 (source flags 13000-13100),

6) Models of constructions (source flags 14000-15999).

Areas not covered by the data collection methods were filled through substitutional models (source flags 14-15000 / 16000-18900) or linear interpolation (19999). It is strongly recommended to use the data source maps for quality assessment.

As of now, only the southern part of the data is available (Elbe-km 0-411 km; Czech-German border to the confluence of Elbe and Lower Havel). The northern part (Elbe-km 411-600 and Lower Havel) will be added as soon as possible.

For further information please contact us.