NCEI is an international leader in coastal digital elevation model (DEM) development. A coastal DEM depicts Earth’s land surface and seafloor in an integrated digital map of a coastal region. NCEI develops high-resolution coastal DEMs by drawing on its vast archive of bathymetric data—collected by NOAA as well as other federal, academia, and nonprofit organizations—for navigation and ocean resource management, and integrating the bathymetric data with land surface height data (topographic data) from other federal agencies, academia, and nonprofit organizations. NCEI meticulously cleans and combines these datasets to create seamless models of the coast with no gaps from land to sea.