Modelling the Cross-Country Trafficability with Geographical Information Systems

Abstract: The main objectives of this work were to investigate Geographical Information Systems techniques for modelling a cross-country trafficability. To accomplished stated tasks, reciprocal relationships between the soil deposits, local hydrology, geology and geomorphology were studied in relation to the study area in South-Eastern Sweden. Growing awareness of nowadays users of GIS in general is being concentrated on understanding an importance of soil conditions changed after cross-country trafficability. Therefore, in this thesis, constructing of the Soil Knowledge Database introduced to the genuine geological soil textural classes a new, modified geotechnical division with desirable for off-road ground reasoning measurable factors, like soil permeability, capillarity or Atterberg’s consistency limits. Digital Elevation Model, the driving force for landscape studies in the thesis, was carefully examined together with the complementary datasets of the investigated area. Testing of the elevation data was done in association to the hydrological modelling, which resulted with the Wetness Index map. The three distinguishable soil wetness conditions: dry, moist and wet, were obtained, and used consequently for creation of the static ground conditions map, a visible medium of soils susceptibility to for example machine compaction. The work resulted with a conceptual scheme for cross-country trafficability modelling, which was put into effect while modeling in GIS. As a final outcome, by combining all processed data together, derivatives were incorporated and draped over the rendered 3D animating scene. A visually aided simulation enabled to concretized theoretical, hypothetical and experimental outcomes into one coherent model of apprised under Multicriterial Evaluation techniques standardized factor maps for ground vehicle maneuverability. Also further steps of research were proposed.