Decoding elevation…
Earth observation & GeoAI · ShowcaseConcept

One valley, seven ways of seeing it.

A real elevation model of the Bow Valley at Lake Louise, Alberta, read the way geospatial pipelines read the planet: relief, light, line of sight, an orbit swath, a GeoAI pass, a geodesic grid and a registered stack.

01 · Elevation

Relief, measured.

The elevation grid as a hidden-line mesh. Contours are traced by marching squares; every fifth is an index contour. Hover the terrain to read a height and trace its contour in red.

Steps: 20 · 25 · 40 · 50 · 100 · 200 m. Index contour every 5th line.
Contour levels drawn
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Contour length
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Under the cursor
hover the terrain
02 · Light and slope

Hillshade and slope, one gradient.

Hillshade and slope come from the elevation gradient at every pixel, drawn as line work: a line screen for light, cross-hatching for steepness, or illuminated contours.

Rendering
Sun azimuth
Drag the dial, or focus it and use the arrow keys.
Slope classes, share of the tile
03 · Viewshed

What a mast can see.

Click the terrain to place a mast. Rays from the antenna to every edge cell test line of sight across the grid, with Earth curvature and standard refraction (k = 0.13), for a receiver 2 m above the ground.

Place on
Or click the terrain. With the 3D view focused, arrow keys move the mast 500 m.
Visible area
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Share of the tile
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Farthest visible cell
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Mast ground elevation
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Mast position
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04 · Satellite pass

One pass, one swath, line by line.

A sensor on a sun-synchronous orbit sweeps its swath down the valley. Optical shows real HLS imagery of 21 August 2025 as a line screen. SAR shows backscatter modelled from the terrain geometry, with layover and shadow.

Sensor
Satellites in the constellation
Ground-track heading
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Orbital period, 700 km
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Tile inside the swath
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Revisit at 51.4° N, about
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SAR layover · shadow
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05 · GeoAI

GeoAI as a method, not an oracle.

Candidate slopes are computed from the elevation grid. The detection boxes and their scores show how a model’s output is filtered by confidence and reviewed. A method demonstration on real terrain, not a hazard assessment.

Candidate area
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Candidate regions
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Detections at or above threshold
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    06 · Geodesic grid

    Every station, counted in its cell.

    Open-network station positions are aggregated, in your browser, into the geodesic cells of a Goldberg polyhedron, the same idea as H3 hexagons. Filter by domain; extrude by count. Drag the globe to turn it.

    Domain
    Cells
    Extrusion and fill on a log scale of the station count.
    Stations aggregated
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    Occupied cells
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    Most in one cell
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    Cell holding this valley
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    Cell under the cursor
    hover the globe
    07 · LayersRegistered stack

    One grid, every layer registered.

    Every layer on this page sits on the same grid. Scroll to pull the stack apart and put it back together, or hold it apart. Toggle a layer to see what it adds.

    Stack