Managing Elevation—Managing Elevation

Elevation rasters store elevation measurements for a given area in an evenly spaced grid. These measurements might depict "bare earth" digital terrain models (DTMs), or digital surface models (DSMs) that include buildings, vegetation, and other above-ground features. Elevation rasters can also be used to derive datasets like hillshades, slope, or aspect to use for visualization or analysis.

Organizations often manage collections of elevation datasets with different projections or resolutions, which can be challenging. These collections can also be very large—instead of dealing with the files directly, it's often more manageable for the end user to connect to services that provide only the data necessary for visualization or analysis.

Using a mosaic dataset configured to manage elevation data makes it easier to manage and share elevation data from multiple sources. Raster functions (a capability of mosaic datasets and ArcGIS Image Server) can visualize the data on-the-fly as a hillshade, slope, aspect, or other derived product (no preprocessing required). Mosaic datasets can also be served as dynamic image services, making elevation data accessible to end users and applications. Explore the following resources to learn more about managing elevation data.

Note:

To create and edit mosaic datasets, you'll need ArcGIS Pro (Standard or Advanced license). To serve mosaic datasets, you'll need ArcGIS Image Server.