The invention discloses a single-band matrix type DEM data progressive refined transmission method and system. The method comprises: segmenting DEM data, performing singular value decomposition, analyzing sub-slices, extracting effective singular vectors and singular values layer by layer, then performing compression, performing transmission and storage from a sending end to a receiving end layerby layer, and performing recovery at the receiving end. The system comprises a segmentation module, a decomposition module, an analysis and extraction module, a compression module, a transmission module and a receiving module. According to the method and the system, refined transmission under the control of precision parameters can be realized according to the requirements of actual precision, andthe specific requirements of numerical DEM data in the aspect of precision are met. After the DEM data fragments are compressed, the DEM data fragments do not need to be directly recovered to be in amatrix form at the receiving end and can continuously exist in a vector form, and the compression effect is reserved. When the data is recovered, the used calculation is basic calculation, so that the calculation burden is not increased, and the method has parallelism.