“The Topographic Landscape Model (TLM) contains Topographic Core Data in a cognitive and understandable order. They represent the natural and civilised reality in the sense of an inventory which provides an inference to reality.“ [Voser 2001]

Topography - Reality - Cognition [Voser 2001]

Behind a topographical landscape model, there is a data model describing the geometric and thematic semantics of the topographic (3D)-data.