Virtual Terrain Locations

Virtual Terrain Locations - Asia

Parts of the world will become virtualized as time and people arise to tackle them. If you are working on any particular location and are willing to be listed here, please let us know!

By Country

Afghanistan
- discussion of Afghanistan data at Terrainmap.com
- Afghanistan Maps at U of Texas
Cambodia
- There are 1:100,000 scanned topo-sheets covering all of Cambodia at Southeast Asian Topographic Map Databases, CSEAS, Kyoto University, however, there is a complicated request process involving filling out a paper form in order to get online access to a small number of tiles with limited use conditions
China
India
- Overall, India is yet another country whose government treats map data as sensitive, so there is no ready access.
- In 2005-2008, CRIT Mumbai worked on the evolving Mumbai Free Map and has the Mumbai Map Archive, a series of free high-resolution scanned maps and satellite imagery of Mumbai City, Suburbs, and the Metropolitan Region. The mumbai.freemap.in site is gone. What became of it?
  - OSM Wiki Mumbai has some indication that they tried to roll the Free Map into OSM.
- IIT Kanpur is a prominent tech school with a LIDAR department, main person is Dr. Lohani
  - They did an aerial LIDAR scan of the school area, and made a derived "3D Virtual Model of IITK", but unfortunately it's only publicly visible as a video on youtube..
  - There is a related software Geokno LASViewer with a sample dataset (which isn't of the IITK campus)
- According to a 2013 article in the Times of India, Ranchi to be mapped in 3D
  - Jharkhand aims to be the third state after Delhi and Andhra Pradesh to have 3D map of major cities.
  - The 3D map of Delhi is being prepared by Survey of India and will cost around Rs 120 crore (~$22 million US)
  - They will "have every detail including location of buildings, water and sewerage line, electric cable, roads and by-lanes".
- LeadDog Consulting commercially licenses City Street data for some Indian cities at 1:7,500 scale, and Major Roads and Highways for the whole country at 1:250,000 scale.
- UV animation (2007-?) is/was a team led by Guruprassad T.N providing model services for building 3D cities. The 3D warehouse showed many of their models. They had a project called ModelMyIndia with "A mission to build India in 3D. It is a virtual model of every city, buildings, structures, etc."
- Contact: Dr. M. R. Nayak, mrnayak@today.com.au, Dy. Director & Advisor, Enabling Systems, National Institute of Oceanography (CSIR, India). His interest: modeling the coastal Indian Ocean (Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal and the Northern Indian Ocean)
Iran
- commercial data: Iran page at East View Geospatial has 30m DEM for 3 small areas
- NGDIR (National Geoscience Database of Iran) has some free downloads, but they are mostly just low-resolution un-georeferenced maps and images
- NCC (National Cartographic Center) has basically nothing online
- reportedly as of 2004: During the last 2 decades NCC has tried to develop the whole basemap and topographic map of Iran (scale=1:25000). It is almost completed. They used 1:4000 aerial photos.
Japan
Kazakhstan
- the Virtual Heritage Lab of CNR-ITABC has built interactive virtual models of an archaeological site of Kazakhstan
Korea
- a commercial data source exists:
  - 1 second interval DEM (~30m), covers south and north Korea
  - divided into 240 areas, each 15 by 15 minutes
  - it is derived from a contour map (1:50,000 scale) via TIN
  - for more information, email Hoseong Kim (김호성) of More Technologies Inc.
- there is a beautiful cloud-free true color 250m image in the MODIS gallery
- another commercial source for DEM and vector data: North Korea Geospatial Data from East View Geospatial
- ZDNet press release on May 4th, 2007: "...successful utilization of 3D technology in its development of Urban Planning Information System. Seoul Metropolitan government used high quality 3D Geospatial database developed from a 1 meter digital terrain model , texturing 10cm aerial imagery covering 605 square km (1567 square mile), about one million box-shape simple model for general buildings and 1200 accurate model by using actual picture of the major landmarks.
  - Korean company Woodai Cals Ltd. developed the system technology for the Seoul project, and reportedly has clients in other countries as well.
Kyrgyzstan
- there is a beautiful cloud-free true color 250m image in the MODIS gallery
Laos
- There are 1:100,000 scanned topo-sheets covering all of Laos at Southeast Asian Topographic Map Databases, CSEAS, Kyoto University, however, there is a complicated request process involving filling out a paper form in order to get online access to a small number of tiles with limited use conditions
Malaysia
- report: "in Malaysia, there is no DEM yet, all are in DXF contour line, and mostly digitized from 1:25000 hardcopy, the price about RM800 per sheet."
Myanmar
- Orthocoverage Downloads includes a free sample of good data (15m greyscale image, 15m elevation) for a small area in Myanmar
Philippines
- correspondence from a mapping professional there - summary: "As for data availability in the Philippines, the situation is fairly bleak."
- NEXTMap Philippines is commercial elevation data at 5m spacing
- 2010 paper Grassroots GIS: Digital outdoor designing where the streets have no name describes trying to enable city planning in the slums of Manila, with the conclusion that the first step is GPS and photos to put the slums on the maps in OSM.
Russia
- There exists a vast set of Russian military topography maps which can be used to generate 1:200K DEMs
- contact Harri Lilja has done VTP modeling of city area of Beslan, located in North Ossetia, near Chechnyan border
Taiwan
- report: "DTM ASCII exists at 40m grid spacing, but it is strictly licensed."
- update 2003.08: "Taiwan has a pretty complete coverage of DEM, aerial photographs, and satellite images. They are all available at reasonable cost. There are also a variety of GIS layer data, but they are scattered in different agencies and organizations."
Thailand
- GISTDA (geodata agency) deals with satellite imagery, reselling it for mysteriously high prices
Tibet
- there is a beautiful nearly-cloud-free true color 250m image in the MODIS gallery
- Satellite images of the Yecheng-Western Tibet-Kathmandu-Highway is a nice collection of annotated LandSat images and related visualizations
Vietnam
- Reported in 2006: "Geodata of Vietnam is mainly occupied by Government Agencies. That's why so little public geo-Information is on Internet. Vietnam is on the way to become an e-Government, at that time I think everything is opened."
- Center for Information and Archives of Geology has mostly geological data, browsable but not downloadable
- CIREN: The Portal of Natural Resources and Environment Information may lead to some geodata, but the site is entirely in Vietnamese so it is difficult for me to tell
- There are 1:100,000 scanned topo-sheets covering all of Vietnam at Southeast Asian Topographic Map Databases, CSEAS, Kyoto University, however, there is a complicated request process involving filling out a paper form in order to get online access to a small number of tiles with limited use conditions

The Himalaya

The best known elevation data for the Himalaya are the improved SRTM tiles available from Jonathan de Ferranti's Viewfinder Panoramas site
Not geodata, but a stunning QTVR from the peak of Everest (border of Tibet and Nepal) provides a good reference image for what visualization software can aim to achieve (as well as a great example of how to properly put a QTVR image on a webpage without constraining its width.)