[GRASSLIST:10385] Re: Making starspan grass-ready (need a GRASS programmer!)

[Dylan Beaudette]

On Wednesday 15 February 2006 04:11 pm, Jonathan Greenberg wrote:
> Hi all, we have a program we announced a year or so ago called "starspan"
> (starspan.casil.ucdavis.edu) -- the purpose of this program is to query
> raster data based on vector input(s) and produce a number of outputs
> (including a .csv file with the vector database + raster data fused
> together).  This algorithm is FAR faster than equivalent algorithms (e.g.
> ESRI's zonal stats) and was designed specifically with large datasets (and
> multiple raster and vector datasets) in mind and for import into stats
> packages.
>
> We're hoping to get some feedback or even an offer of help to roll this
> into a future grass release -- if anyone is interested please contact me
> (take a look at the website so you can see what we are trying to
> accomplish). Ideally, we'd like someone familiar with grass's image
> analysis algorithms (e.g. classification), since one of the major
> applications of this program is to speed up the process of initial
> classification -- the idea is you extract the spectral data associated with
> "field" data (known classes, perhaps collected with a GPS), perform the
> classifications/accuracy assessments only on this subset (which will be far
> smaller than the entire image), and once the correct classification is
> decided on, only then is it applied to the entire image(s).  We did this
> with ENVI quite a bit, and it REALLY sped up how we analyzed data.
>
> Much of the algorithm is finished, we mostly need help getting the program
> grass-ready, and cleaning up some of the interface.
>
> Please let me know!  I use AIM and MSN (accounts below) if you would prefer
> instant messaging, otherwise please email me!
>
> --j
>
> --
>
> Jonathan A. Greenberg, PhD
> NRC Research Associate
> NASA Ames Research Center
> MS 242-4
> Moffett Field, CA 94035-1000
> Office: 650-604-5896
> Cell: 415-794-5043
> AIM: jgrn3007
> MSN: jgrn3007 at hotmail.com

Jonathan and other GRASS users,

I can certainly vouch for STARSPAN's speed and flexibility. I have been using 
it (with some great help from the author and current maintainer) in my 
research for about a month now. I am glad to hear that Jonathan is interested 
in making a tighter coupling between this tool and GRASS, something I have 
often thought about doing myself (yeah right!). This message is very timely, 
as I have recently gone through a review of the various ways in GRASS to 
accomplish this same task. This tool would be a great enhancement to the 
stats tools currently in the GRASS toolset. 

I would be willing to spend some time working on this, as it is directly 
realted to my research- however oversight by a more capable programmer would 
be a must.

Cheers,

-- 
Dylan Beaudette
Soils and Biogeochemistry Graduate Group
University of California at Davis
530.754.7341