How to extract breaklines from a given DEM?

Question

Breaklines are very useful for describing a terrain - for example to build an exact TIN.

My question is, how to extract these breaklines from a given DEM?

I calculated the curvature (vertical) - raster (using arcgis 10), where you can see the breaklines (min/max-curvature), but I did not figure out how to extract them to get polylines in the end.

What is the workflow to get these breaklines from a DEM?

Does anyone have an idea of a workflow, or a "tool", or skript, which can help?

I think I am not the first/last man who wants to perform this task:)

...in the meanwhile i have found a paper on this topic that seems to be a good solution, but the big question remains: how to reduce that to practice?

Or has anyone a different (easier?) approach with some software?

Answer 1

I would try it this way: search for a critical value in the curvature raster file. Above this value you will expect a breakline.

Then I would use conditional statements in the raster calculator to use "1" for pixels above the critical and 0 below the critical value. Use this binary raster for raster to polygon conversion in the toolbox. you will find an answer on how to get the polygon to line here

after all you can build up a model from these steps.

Answer 2

Conrec does this. It was originally written in fortran though, so it has been ported around a few times.

A library I have been working on in node.js, turf, uses this algorithm to create these contours based of point vector data. The script to do this is pretty simple and would basically be:

var t = require('turf')
var fs = require('fs')
var z = 'elevation'
var resolution = 15
var breaks = [.1, 22, 45, 55, 65, 85,  95, 105, 120, 180]

t.load('./path/to/points.geojson', function(err, points){
  t.contour(points, z, resolution, breaks, function(err, contours){
    if(err) throw err
    fs.writeFileSync('.path/to/output.geojson', contours)
  })
})

You can also generate jenks natural breaks if you do not have specific breaks in mind:

var t = require('turf')
var propertyName = 'elevation'
var num = 10

t.load('./path/to/points.geojson', function(err, pts){
  if(err) throw err
  t.jenks(pts, 'elevation', num, function(err, breaks){
    if(err) throw err
    console.log(breaks) // [ 11, 12, 18, 25, 29, 41, 50, 55, 76, 90, 143 ]
  })
})

Answer 3

If you go to my VA lidar site and look for a project with Breaklines. We have many.

For example 2010 / 2011 Eleven County Coastal VA Lidar. You'll see links to all the reports and other documents and this explains how they made the breaklines usually in ArcGIS. Try a few differing projects for differing methods but I can tell you the NHD is often used, as are ridges as derived from a DEM. Mostly the reports are in the metadata. Here is the one for above. CTRL F Breaklines in the pdf.