Derivation of geodesic flow fields and spectrum in digital topographic basins (Q937025)

Summary: We present a framework to characterize terrestrial functions-surficial and bottom topographic regions that are represented, respectively, as raster digital elevation models (DEMs) and digital bathymetric models (DBMs)-through analysis of flow fields that are simulated via geodesic morphology. Characterization of such functions is done via a new descriptor. Computation of this new descriptor involves the following steps: {\parindent=8mm \begin{itemize}\item[(i)] basin in digital form representing topographic fluctuations as an input, \item[(ii)] threshold decomposition of basin that consists of channelized and nonchannelized regions into sets, \item[(iii)] proper indexing of these sets to decide the marker set(s) and its (their) corresponding mask set(s), \item[(iv)] performing geodesic propagation that provides basic flow field structures, and \item[(v)] finally providing a new basin descriptor-geodesic spectrum. \end{itemize}} We demonstrated this five-step framework on five different synthetic and/or realistic DEMs and/or DBMs. This study provides potentially invaluable insights to further study the travel-time flood propagation within basins of both fluvial and tidal systems.