Relief maps of the area. Determining the height of a point above sea level

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Hello. Is it possible to determine the heights (above sea level) of route points (YMaps.Route) using standard Yandex.Maps API tools?

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Hello. Is it possible to determine the heights (above sea level) of route points (YMaps.Route) using standard Yandex.Maps API tools?

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Hello. Is it possible to determine the heights (above sea level) of route points (YMaps.Route) using standard Yandex.Maps API tools?

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Konstantin Konovalov:

I have long wanted to make a convenient map of the heights of Moscow in order to comfortably ride a bicycle in unfamiliar parts of the city. And so that it would be easier for friends who are starting to use a bicycle as transport to explain how best to build a route. Not many people realize that for a cyclist, changes in elevation are more important than the shortest route. In this post I will talk a little about height maps and how Red Square needs to be changed to make the city convenient for people.

OpenStreetMap with elevation data

I tried working with different elevation data uploads from different map services. But these data were not accurate enough and the horizontal step was too large, and not accurate, not giving an idea of sharp ascents and descents, such as Rozhdestvensky Boulevard.

This summer the idea came that it makes sense to look for data not in modern web services, but in old city maps. Before the revolution, the quality of cards was quite high. And there was no car traffic yet. People rolled carriages, carts and horse-drawn horses themselves or with the help of horses. This means that the issue of height difference in such a hilly city as Moscow was very acute. I quickly found a map from 1888 that accurately described the topography of the capital.

The plan of Moscow was drawn up on the basis of a trigonometric network for surveying and leveling the city in 1874-77 by N.N. Smirnov and D.P. Rashkov (2nd edition of the Moscow City Duma 1888)

Some will say that this is an old map, a lot has changed. On the one hand, yes, the city is no longer recognizable, but the heights have practically not changed, of course, bridges across the Moscow River have moved somewhere, and therefore the relief in these places has been slightly adjusted, but in fact there have been no serious changes in the relief in a year and a half century did not happen. And this is my coolest discovery in this project.

One summer day I sat under a tree in the Hermitage garden and redrew the heights from an old map on my laptop. And then he squeezed it into a three-dimensional model of the city's relief.

3D model of Moscow heights

Seven Hills of Moscow

The lighter areas are the peaks, the darker areas are the lowlands. Frequent ladder of horizontals - sharp changes in heights. This visualization helped me quickly figure out some parts of the city myself and distinguish the main hills and ways to ride a bike up them with minimal effort.

Speaking of hills. Until now, many people like to repeat that Moscow is a city on seven hills, but few people know where these hills are.

In fact, this is all not true; somewhere from the 16th century they began to mention seven hills, and even then only to emphasize the connection between Moscow and Rome. I marked on the map the places where these hills are located. It is easy to see that most of them are just parts of larger hills.

Seven Hills of Moscow

I personally find it interesting that in reality there are two architectural monuments at the highest points of the main hills inside the Garden Ring. The highest point is the inner side of Sretensky Boulevard, in this place there are buildings of the Rossiya insurance company, famous not only for its architecture and residents, but for the fact that the building was built as an autonomous one with its own power plant in the basement, a prototype of air conditioning, heating and even artesian well 45 meters deep. And at the same time, they chose the highest point for construction. Maybe in case of complete flooding of the entire city? Don't know. But it's an interesting coincidence. And on the second highest hill is Sytin’s office house, which survived Napoleon’s invasion, and in 1979 was even moved 33 meters to the side.

Detour of the hills

But let's return to the original cycling topic. A height map is needed to build a route and to design cycling infrastructure. It’s not difficult to figure out how to build a route using a height map. Let's take, for example, one of the most unpleasant sections of the Boulevard Ring bike path - Rozhdestvensky Boulevard. This is one of the most prominent hills in the city center. Those who constantly ride a bicycle know that it is better to stay away and immediately think about a route outside this section, even though there is a bicycle path on Rozhdestvensky Boulevard.

The red dotted line is a sharp rise, the white lines are bicycle paths, the yellow lines are detour lines.

To avoid having to drive up too steep a mountain, you can create alternative routes (route 1 or route 2 in the picture), which will have a more even distribution of elevation changes along their length, which will reduce physical activity.

The white line is the boulevard route, the yellow line is the alternative route. The map is oriented to the west.

Elevation maps can help you get around a small area, or they can offer alternative routes avoiding miles of hills. For example, if you are on Kropotkinskaya (point A), and you need to get to Trubnaya (point B), then the most logical route that comes to mind is a trip along the boulevard ring, and there is also a bicycle lane in some places, it seems that the solution is not bad, but in fact there is a calmer option for movement. You can go along the mouth of the Neglinka River, which now flows in a pipe, and thus go around the hill. Driving along the boulevard will take you to the top of one of the highest hills in Moscow, to Pushkinskaya Square. This means that you will have to go up most of the way, which is not the best solution. And on the way you will have to drag your bike through the underground passage under New Arbat.

Bicycle infrastructure design

In recent years, the Moscow City Hall has done a lot to create cycling infrastructure in the city. This is a very good start towards an ecological and healthy city. But, unfortunately, there is a downside. The city is building a lot of bike paths, but they all appear in a chaotic order, they are not connected to each other. That is, they do not form a single network with the help of which you can get from point A to point B. When you ride a bicycle around the city, you may come across several bike paths along the way, but most of the time you will be moving on streets that are not suitable for cycling.

According to reports from the mayor's office, Moscow already has more than 200 kilometers of bicycle paths. And this is one of the main problems and misunderstandings between the mayor’s office and cyclists. The mayor's office thinks that the more paths are built, the more bicycle-friendly the city will become, but in reality this is not the case. People will not ride on bike paths like in Amsterdam until these paths are interconnected into a single, understandable network. No one needs paths from nowhere to nowhere except people writing reports on the kilometers of built paths in the city.

Moscow needs mainline bicycle paths, which should connect parts of the city with each other, be as straight as possible and converge in the center. We also need secondary paths that will penetrate into the neighborhoods and connect the main lines with each other, forming a single continuous network.

Map with main POIs

Let's return to the height map. How can it help in the design and justification of the construction of bicycle paths? Let's take a look at the current state of the “network” of bike paths in the center of Moscow.

Operating bike paths

This is what the existing bike paths in the city look like. Yes, they help build some routes, but they go from nowhere to nowhere, and up and down hills, and sometimes are simply interrupted by parking. And therefore there are not as many cyclists on them as we would like.

Therefore, people are not yet ready to switch from a car or subway to a bicycle. In order for the bicycle to become a real transport alternative for many people, it is necessary to create a smart network of bicycle paths that will be interconnected and will also comfortably go around sharp rises in the terrain.

Red Square

Now it is completely forbidden to ride a bicycle on Red Square, no one even knows the reason for this ban. But the police are constantly trying to stop cyclists there.

If you look closely at the elevation map, you will see that Red Square is the bottom of a hill, which you can easily drive around to head towards Novokuznetskaya or Kotelnicheskaya embankment. But now it’s not just that there is no infrastructure, there is simply a ridiculous ban on the movement of bicycles and prohibiting signs are hanging.

I would like to appeal to the mayor of the city, the Federal Protective Service and the leadership of the transport complex with a proposal to develop bicycle transport. If a direct main bicycle path is laid from Tsvetnoy Boulevard to Dobryninskaya (via Red Square), it will connect the two parts of the city. Since the construction of huge bridges for cars in the 30s (Bolshoi Kamenny, Bolshoi Moskvoretsky and Bolshoi Ustinsky), instead of the comfortable old bridges, the city has been torn into two parts, between which a pedestrian can only move normally by metro. But if we begin to develop cycling infrastructure and transfer bicycle paths between two parts of the center of the capital, albeit over these road bridges, then bicycle and pedestrian traffic will increase.

Main bike path through the city center. Existing bike paths are marked in white.

The first main bike path I propose through the center is highlighted in yellow. Throughout its entire length, the elevation differences are insignificant, at least not greatly complicating the pedaling of the bicycle.

Half of this bike path already exists; you just need to connect the pieces of existing paths together, as well as connect it to the embankments. Embankments are a very suitable place for bicycle paths, because there are no elevation changes and there is almost no traffic light. But they lack infrastructure and cyclists, developing high speeds, interfere with walking pedestrians. There are also no ground crossings, which makes it difficult to get onto the embankments.

To implement such a bike path, all that is needed is political will. This bike lane will have almost no impact on vehicular traffic. To the south it can continue along Lyusinovskaya Street to Tulskaya, where there is already a one-way bicycle path, and to the north along Olympic Avenue to Festival Park.

After the appearance of such a bicycle path, it would be logical to branch off new main paths to the west and east of the Kremlin ring.

City for people

The city is primarily created for people; cars, of course, have a place, but if everyone gets behind the wheel of a car, the city will stand still. Yes, in fact, now he is stuck in traffic jams all day. So if at least 5% of Muscovites switch to bicycles, it will become easier to breathe in the city and traffic jams will decrease. I mostly travel by bicycle, which in most cases is faster than taking a bus, taxi, and for short distances faster than taking the metro. But not everyone can drive along the roads in the outer lane, every now and then bumping into car boors. Therefore, the process of switching to a bicycle is still difficult for most city residents. The city doesn't need bike lanes, the city needs a connected, well-designed network of bike paths.

In the meantime, Moscow is sad and awaits crowds of cyclists.

In addition to the cycling question, the elevation map explains why Malaya Bronnaya was flooded this summer. Yes, Moscow's storm drainage system is not in the best condition, but if you look at the elevation map, you will see that the flooded part of Malaya Bronnaya, as well as the Patriarch's Pond, are located in a small lowland and water tends to accumulate there. Therefore, the mayor’s office should pay attention to storm drainage in such places first.

I conducted this cartographic research on my own initiative this summer. I only analyzed the central part of the city, but I think a normal height map can be compiled for the whole of Moscow. It just takes time.

When talking about viewing Google Maps, people sometimes mention the map/terrain mode, which highlights land features by changing color tones. In this map mode, valleys and mountain ranges are clearly distinguished, with elevation levels plotted. But if you need to determine the height at a certain point from a picture on a map, or the height above sea level in a valley, this is quite difficult to do.

Therefore, we will use an auxiliary program for, which determines not only geographical coordinates (longitude and latitude), but also the altitude above sea level. This map can be switched to the "relief" mode, find the desired peak and determine its height.

Using this online program you can not only determine the height of mountain peaks. If you have never wondered how high above sea level the area you live in is before, then you will be surprised by the results of your measurements on the map.

Like Google map program Google Earth also knows how to determine the height of the terrain above sea level. In this program, the height is determined dynamically for the coordinates under the mouse pointer.

For information. You can determine the altitude above sea level using an aneroid barometer, which will show 760 millimeters of mercury at zero altitude at a temperature of 15 °C. At an altitude of 500 meters above sea level, the barometer will show 720 mm, 1000 meters - 670 mm Hg, and so on. With increasing altitude above sea level, the atmospheric pressure drops by approximately 8 mmHg. Art. for every 100 meters of ascent. And the higher the altitude, the lower the atmospheric pressure and oxygen concentration in the air. For example, at an altitude of 3500 m, the atmospheric pressure is 1.5 times less than at zero altitude, and accordingly, the oxygen saturation of the air is lower.

For some people, an altitude of 800 meters already affects their well-being. Therefore, when planning your travel route using a satellite map, you need to pay attention to the altitude of the area. On the other hand, there are many high mountain resorts located higher than 1500 meters above sea level.

The Google Earth image shows the location on the screen of the block displaying current altitude information. In the program options, the 3D View/Units of Measurement block contains a choice of units of measurement: meters/kilometers or feet/miles.

Of course, you can determine the altitude using an aneroid barometer, a GPS navigator, or simultaneously use both as two different devices or as two devices in one, for example, a Samsung Galaxy Nexus smartphone, which has a built-in GPS navigator and a barometer. But the disadvantage is that these need to be done directly in the area being measured and these devices must be available. And if you are just about to travel or are taking altitude measurements to expand your own horizons, then the easiest way would be to use Google Earth or. Indeed, in this case, in order to determine the height, you just need to click on the point found on the satellite map.

Another argument in favor of measuring using a map is that to determine geographic coordinates and altitude above sea level, there is no need to independently determine and calculate values using a barometer, tables or formulas. After all, for a person not concerned with the need for precise metrological measurements, the result determined from a satellite map is quite sufficient.

But if you need to specifically determine the height at which your office, apartment or house roof is located above sea level, then you will have to take measurements yourself. You can determine the height above sea level from a satellite map of any area on Earth, but the height of buildings cannot be determined. Even if a specific building is selected, you will only receive information about the elevation of the area. And further. If a point is found on the planet that does not have altitude data in the Google service, then the program calculates the average value calculated from the four closest coordinates for which the altitude is determined. But the deviation from the actual value may be insignificant. You should also pay attention to the fact that using this service you can also determine the depths of oceans and seas. In this case, the calculated height will be presented with negative values, that is, the depth is determined.

Coordinates for information:
An area of land that is below sea level