City of Seattle 2 ft contours derived from Lidar captured in 2021. Contour lines display at 2ft, 10ft and 50ft intervals dependent on scale. Lines have been smoothed and generalized for display and performance.

Development Detail:

This vector tile service includes topographic contour lines representing elevation at 2-foot intervals within the city of Seattle.

The contours were derived from a bare earth - digital elevation model (DEM) with a pixel resolution of 1.5 feet. The lidar data that created the DEM were collected by NV5 Geospatial over the spring and summer months of 2021 and provided to the city by King County in 2022.

The DEM used to generate the contours was filtered using the Focal Statistics tool in ArcGIS, which served to limit some abrupt changes in cell values. A 3x3 rectangular neighborhood analysis was applied and a mean value was calculated per raster cell.

After running the Focal Statistics tool, 2-foot contours were generated from the filtered DEM. To reduce file size and improve performance, the contours were generalized further using the Smooth Line tool in ArcGIS. A smoothing algorithm type of Polynomial Approximation with Exponential Kernel (PAEK) and a smoothing tolerance of 20 feet was selected in the Smooth Line tool parameter options.

Finally, after executing both generalization tools (Focal Statistics and Smooth Line), all lines less than 25 feet in length were omitted from the final output.

Please note: The 2-foot contours are intended to be used for general reference and cartographic purposes only and should not be used for analysis purposes.