GIS 5935 Module 4

This week we have been working with Triangular Irregular Networks (TIN's). TIN's are a collection of vectors that are "constructed by triangulating  a set of verticies" (ESRI, 2020). TIN's are commonly used to represent ground surfaces and could be used to create 3D representations of an area. Slopes and contour lines can easily be derived from TIN's. 

Our assignment this week had us work with various TIN's and Digital Elevation Models (DEM's). We used local scenes in ArcPro to display and manipulate TIN's. We worked with varying elevation sources and vertical exaggeration to enhance imagery produced from TIN's. 

Along with working with TIN's we also worked with DEM's. We used a DEM and converted it to a TIN in order to carry out various analysis. One exercise had us run a suitability analysis to find the most suitable location for a ski run. Appropriate sites for ski runs had to have ideal elevation, aspect and slope features. To carry out the results we had to create various rasters and use a variety of tools including reclassify and weighted overlay. The weighted overlay tool combined everything together and allowed us to find suitable sites based on feature properties in the area. Below is a depiction of the result of my suitability analysis. 

The final part of our exercise this week had us compare data that was derived from TIN's. We used the Edit TIN tool to limit the boundaries of a TIN used to analyze the topography of a certain area. We could see how limiting the boundaries of a TIN modified the derived TIN edges and gave a more detailed picture of what the real topography is on the ground. 

Refrences

ESRI. 2020. What is a TIN surface?. https://desktop.arcgis.com/en/arcmap/latest/manage-data/tin/fundamentals-of-tin-surfaces.htm