IVERT

ICESat-2 Validation of Elevations Reporting Tool

IVERT validates Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) by comparing their elevations against ICESat-2 satellite photon data. It supports topographic, bathymetric, and mixed coastal DEMs, runs fully offline on any machine, and handles vertical datum conversions automatically.

Developed by the CIRES Coastal DEM Team. Primary authors: Mike MacFerrin (IVERT) and Matthew Love (continuous-dems utilities).

Note: This repository will soon be ported over to the continuous-dems ecosystem.

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Capabilities

• Validate topographic, bathymetric, and coastal DEMs against ICESat-2 ATL03/ATL24 photons
• Combines ATL03/ATL08/ATL13/ATL24 for photon-level classifications, plus external datasets (such as the Global Buildings Atlas) to classify built structures.
• Additional coastline filtering to minimize false-positive ATL08 "ground" photons appearing offshore over water, and unreasonably-shallow "bathy floor" photons with large errors over deep water.
• Automatic vertical datum conversions (NAVD88, EGM2008, MLLW, and many more)
• Configurable photon confidence and quality filtering
• Statistical outputs: bias, RMSE, NMAD, per-cell error maps
• Automatically-generated plots of DEM accuracies compared to ICESat-2.
• Export errors to GeoTIFF, GeoPackage, Shapefile, or XYZ text
• Local photon database management — download once, validate many times

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Installation

pip install ivert

(^ coming soon)

For development (editable install from this repo):

git clone https://github.com/ciresdem/IVERT.git
cd IVERT
pip install -e .

Three dependencies — fetchez, globato, and transformez — are pulled automatically from the continuous-dems GitHub organization and do not need to be installed separately.

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Quick start

1. Download ICESat-2 photon data for your area (bounding box in W/E/S/N order):

ivert database download -74.0/-73.0/40.5/41.0

2. Validate your DEM:

ivert validate mydem.tif

3. Check the output directory for mydem_results.h5, a validation plot (.png), and error exports (.tif, .gpkg).

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Documentation

Command	Description
ivert validate	Validate DEMs against ICESat-2 data
ivert database	Download and manage the local photon database
ivert cache	View and clear the local file cache
ivert options	View and change configuration settings
ivert upgrade	Upgrade IVERT to the latest version