[gdal-dev] SRTM data and Pixel is area vs. Pixel is point

[Roger André]

Morning,

I have a bit of a conundrum which I'm trying to find an answer for,
and which is prompting a certain amount of contentious debate at work.
 I've downloaded a 1-deg x 1-deg SRTM tile from the GLCF site,
SRTM_f03_n007e000.tif.  Now from its name, this tile should have its
origin at N 7, E 0.

When I view the metadata for the tile, I see a helpful note that says,
"Metadata: AREA_OR_POINT=Area"

I assume from this that the data is using "PixellsArea" Raster Space,
as defined at http://www.remotesensing.org/geotiff/spec/geotiff2.5.html.
 This definition states that "The "PixelIsArea" raster grid space R,
which is the default, uses coordinates I and J, with (0,0) denoting
the upper-left corner of the image".  So my guess would be that the UL
corner coordinates of this raster should be (0, 8).  However, that is
not the case.

 - When I run gdalinfo against the tile, I get the following info:
  Upper Left  (  -0.0004167,   8.0004167)

- When I create a worldfile for the tile with gdal_translate, I get
the following pixel coords reported in it:
  -0.0000000000, 8.0000000033

- Also, when I create a shapefile of this tile's extents using
gdaltindex, I get the following extents reported:
Extent: (-0.000417, 6.999583) - (1.000417, 8.000417)

So my question is this, are we really all working with SRTM data that
is offset by 1/2 a pixel because of a discrepancy between
point-vs-area pixel registration?  This is coming to a head for us
because we need to do some raster analysis, and we're having a really
hard time understandind why the data keeps spanning meridians and
parallels.

Would appreciate any clarification or insights.

Roger
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