Reasearch on the technology of electronic sand table based on GIS

Electronic sand table is a new high-tech product by integrating computer application, geographic information systems (GIS) and virtual reality with multimedia. In this paper, an electronic sand table system of target areas is made under the platform of ArcGIS. The design and realization scheme of electronic sand table system is introduced at first. Then, the key techniques for electronic sand table, such as data processing, terrain modeling and feature matching, are described in details. Finally, the electronic sand table system is carried out on the platform of ArcGIS based on digital elevation model (DEM) and satellite remote sensing image. It can give users a real-time and interactive operation circumstance, and provide some references for the decision-makers to get a better understanding of the regions.