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NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) is developing a suite of digital elevation models (DEMs) of the U.S. Atlantic Coast impacted by Hurricane Sandy in October 2012. These DEMs are the initial part of a planned framework for a seamless depiction of merged bathymetry and topography along U.S. coasts.

The DEMs telescope from the deep ocean floor to the coastal zone in 3, 1, 1/3, and 1/9 arc-second cell sizes. The 1/9 arc-second DEMs integrate both bathymetric and topographic data at the coast, while the offshore DEMs map bathymetry only.

DEMs are tiled to enable targeted, rapid updates as new data become available.

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Bathymetric and topographic data utilized for DEM creation were contributed by a variety of sources, including the NOAA Office of Coast Survey, NOAA National Geodetic Survey, U.S. Geological Survey, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. DEMs are referenced horizontally to the North American Datum of 1983 (NAD83) and vertically to the North American Vertical Datum of 1988 (NAVD 88). Vertical datum transformations were applied using the NOAA VDatum software. The horizontal units of the data are decimal degrees; the vertical units are meters.

DEM specifications were developed jointly by NCEI and the U.S. Geological Survey Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Data Center. Funding for this project was provided through the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act of 2013.