A global assessment of the SRTM performance

The NASA/NGA Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) collected interferometric radar data which has been used by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to generate a neor-global topography data product for latitudes smaller than 60 degrees. One of the primary goals of the mission was to produce a data set that was globally consistent and with quantified errors. To achieve this goal, an extensive global ground campaign was conducted by NGA and NASA to collect ground truth that would allow for the global validation of this unique data set. This paper documents the results of this SRTM validation effort using this global data set. The table shown below summarizes our results (all quantities represent 90 percent errors in meters). [GRAPHICS] In the paper, we present a detailed description of how the results in this table were obtained, We also present detailed characterizations of the height and planimetric components of the error, their magnitudes, geographical distribution, and spatial structure.