Prevention of Mountain Disasters and Maintenance of Residential Area through Real-Time Terrain Rendering

Abstract

Climate change increases the frequency of localized heavy rains and typhoons. As a result, mountain disasters, such as landslides and earthworks, continue to occur, causing damage to roads and residential areas downstream. Moreover, large-scale civil engineering works, including dam construction, cause rapid changes in the terrain, which harm the stability of residential areas. Disasters, such as landslides and earthenware, occur extensively, and there are limitations in the field of investigation; thus, there are many studies being conducted to model terrain geometrically and to observe changes in terrain according to external factors. However, conventional topography methods are expressed in a way that can only be interpreted by people with specialized knowledge. Therefore, there is a lack of consideration for three-dimensional visualization that helps non-experts understand. We need a way to express changes in terrain in real time and to make it intuitive for non-experts to understand. In conventional height-based terrain modeling and simulation, there is a problem in which some of the sampled data are irregularly distorted and do not show the exact terrain shape. The proposed method utilizes a hierarchical vertex cohesion map to correct inaccurately modeled terrain caused by uniform height sampling, and to compensate for geometric errors using Hausdorff distances, while not considering only the elevation difference of the terrain. The mesh reconstruction, which triangulates the three-vertex placed at each location and makes it the smallest unit of 3D model data, can be done at high speed on graphics processing units (GPUs). Our experiments confirm that it is possible to express changes in terrain accurately and quickly compared with existing methods. These functions can improve the sustainability of residential spaces by predicting the damage caused by mountainous disasters or civil engineering works around the city and make it easy for non-experts to understand.