Tools for Simulating Terrain Data

Tactical decision aids provide commanders with the tools necessary to successfully operate in an environment flooded with massive amounts of data obtained from multiple sources. An important input to many decision aids is the terrain data that is used byprocessing algorithms to identify and remove errors in other sensor data, and estimate environmental effects on military systems. The use of high quality digital terrain data enables the employment of powerful algorithms for automated exploitation ofsensor data in tactical decision aids. But the use of digital terrain data also poses little understood pitfalls when simulation is used in the development of these systems. Information Extraction and Transport, Inc. (IET) proposes to developmethodologies for generating realistic simulated terrain from a set of attribute specifications, where the attributes may be geographic attributes (elevation, slope, roughness, features, etc.) or terrain data quality specifications (accuracy, resolution,completeness, currency, etc.). These methodologies will provide the functionality for a terrain product simulator that can generate simulated terrain products with known departures from ground