[gdal-dev] Multidimensional raster support in GDAL

[Edzer Pebesma]

On 10/26/2017 07:25 PM, Even Rouault wrote:
>> More in general, we have multidimensional arrays where horizontal space
> 
>> is not an x y image (GDAL raster band) but for instance a sequence of
> 
>> feature geometries (e.g., in situ sensor data, or demographic data by
> 
>> administrative region, time, and age class).
> 
>  
> 
> I didn't grasp what you meant there. This doesn't sound like gridded
> data, does it ? Can you point to such datasets ?

Not gridded in space, but gridded in spacetime. Examples would be, for
point geometries the EEA air quality database [1], where static station
properties come in one file, and measured air quality measurements (time
series) come in other files, for many parameters; an example where
geometries are regions would be any socio-economic data; concrete
example [2] for each county you'd have a time series of population
counts by age class (2-dimensional array for each county).

[1]
https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/data/airbase-the-european-air-quality-database-7
[2] https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2016/demo/popest/counties-total.html

Also look for OLAP cube; the concept is quite old, and not restricted to
spatially gridded data. But I'm happy to restrict the discussion here
(first) to spatially gridded data.

-- 
Edzer Pebesma
Institute for Geoinformatics
Heisenbergstrasse 2, 48151 Muenster, Germany
Phone: +49 251 8333081