Digital Elevation Data

Australia's future safety, prosperity and sustainability depends on making informed policy and investment decisions that meet the needs of today, and the decades ahead. Digital elevation data which describes Australia's landforms and seabed is crucial for addressing issues relating to the impacts of climate change, disaster management, water security, environmental management, urban planning and infrastructure design. Geoscience Australia is working collaboratively across all levels of government, industry and academia to ensure decision makers, investors and communities have access to the best available elevation data to meet local, regional and national needs.

Online data

Elvis - Elevation and Depth - Foundation Spatial Data
Elvis Elevation and Depth is a cloud-based system allowing users to easily discover and obtain Australian elevation and bathymetry data available within their area of interest. It is developed as a partnership between participating agencies under the Intergovernmental Committee on Surveying and Mapping (ICSM) and brings together open data from Commonwealth, state and territory governments, making it accessible from a convenient central source. Data can be quickly accessed through Elvis to support efficient planning, research and decision-making by government, industry, research communities and any others requiring the data.

Geophysical Archive Data Delivery System
This system provides magnetic, radiometric, gravity and digital elevation data from Australian National, State and Territory Government geophysical data archives.

Packaged data

Drainage Catchment 5m Digital Elevation Models
The drainage catchment Digital Elevation Models (DEM) have been created from high resolution data found on the Elvis system. The drainage catchment DEMs provide a regional product filling the gap between localised high resolution tiled data and the national low resolution mosaic provided by the 1-second Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission dataset.

Each catchment is delivered as a single dataset made up of hundreds of individual input tiles from Elvis, with a resolution of 5m or higher. Where applicable, Near-Shore Bathymetry data has been included in the mosaic, providing a seamless dataset of both elevation and bathymetric information. Supplied with each catchment is a detailed metadata index providing information on the source data used including the capture date, resolution and data custodian.

The project aims to provide the most recently captured elevation data over an area, as opposed to an average value of all datasets currently available in the catalogue.

The drainage catchment DEMs fill a critical gap, providing data to support efficient planning, research and decision-making by government, industry, and research communities.

Drainage catchment DEMs can be ordered through Elvis or downloaded using the link above.

Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of Australia derived from LiDAR 5 Metre Grid
The Digital Elevation Model (DEM) 5 Metre Grid of Australia derived from LiDAR model represents a National 5 metre (bare earth) DEM which has been derived from some 236 individual LiDAR surveys between 2001 and 2015 covering an area in excess of 245,000 square kilometres.

SRTM-derived 1 Second Digital Elevation Models Version 1.0
The national 1 second (~30m) DEMs suite contains three publicly released national models; Digital Elevation Model (DEM), Smoothed DEM (DEM-S) and Hydrologically Enforced DEM (DEM-H). These 1 second products are a significant improvement on the Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission (SRTM) digital surface model (DSM) from which they were derived.

3 second SRTM Derived Digital Elevation Model (DEM) Version 1.0
The 3 second (~90m) Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission (SRTM) Digital Elevation Model (DEM) version 1.0 was derived from resampling the 1 arc second (~30m) gridded DEM (ANZCW0703013355). The DEM represents ground surface topography, and excludes vegetation features. The dataset was derived from the 1 second Digital Surface Model (DSM; ANZCW0703013336) by automatically removing vegetation offsets identified using several vegetation maps and directly from the DSM. The 1 second product provides substantial improvements in the quality and consistency of the data relative to the original SRTM data, but is not free from artefacts. Man-made structures such as urban areas and power line towers have not been treated. The removal of vegetation effects has produced satisfactory results over most of the continent and areas with defects are identified in the quality assessment layers distributed with the data and described in the User Guide (Geoscience Australia and CSIRO Land & Water, 2010). The 3 second DEM was produced for use by government and the public under Creative Commons attribution.

GEODATA 9 Second DEM and D8 Flow Direction Grid 2008 Version 3.0
The national 9 second (~250m) national DEM and flow direction grid describing the principal directions of surface drainage across the whole of Australia.

SRTMGL1v003-DSM
NASA Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) datasets result from a collaborative effort by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA - previously known as the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, or NIMA), as well as the participation of the German and Italian space agencies. The purpose of SRTM was to generate a near-global digital elevation model (DEM) of the Earth using radar interferometry. SRTM was a primary component of the payload on the Space Shuttle Endeavour during its STS-99 mission. Endeavour launched February 11, 2000 and flew for 11 days.
Users of this product must acknowledge the use with; “SRTM data (SRTMGL1V003) courtesy of the NASA EOSDIS Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC).”