[postgis-users] polygons crossing 0/360 longitude

[Shane Byrne]

Thanks Carlos, this is a good idea.

Finding the problem polygons is easy enough, but how did you split them 
into two polygons along this meridian? Can I define a line and with that 
use some postgis function to split the polygon?
I'd also like to copy over all the information in the other fields to 
each new polygon.


Shane

Carlos Ferrão wrote:
> Hi,
> I recently had a similar problem with products crossing the -180/180
> longitude. The problem is that postgis doesn't connect the -180 to the
> 180 as, for instance, Oracle Spatial Module.
> The way I found to solve it was to do an algorithm to find the
> polygons that cross the date line. For each one, I calculate 2
> polygons, one in the negative coordinates and another in the positive
> coordinates (you need to add/subtract 360). I add a multipolygon with
> the information of the two polygons in a single row in the database
> and it works perfectly.
> 
> Hope it helps,
> Carlos Ferrao
> EOP - ESRIN - European Space Agency
> Critical Software - www.criticalsoftware.com
> 
> On 6/21/06, Shane Byrne <shane at quake.mit.edu> wrote:
>> Hi,
>> I have a postgres/postgis database with many (~80k) polygons, the
>> vertices of which are stored in longitude (0-360) and latitude space.
>> These polygons are typically small, but a few hundred of them span the
>> prime meridian. This creates a problem for me when I search for polygon
>> intersections. i.e. a polygon with a longitude range -5 to +5 is
>> actually stored as +355 to +5 and so postgis thinks it intersects a
>> whole bunch of polygons that it really doesn't.  I could change to the
>> -180 to 180 longitude system but that only moves the problem to a
>> different longitude.
>>
>> Is there a graceful way around this?
>> I'm thinking of just making two tables, the other table would have
>> longitudes ranging from -180 to +180 and doing two searches with
>> longitude ranges chosen to avoid the problem area on each table. Does
>> postgis have a way to handle cyclical coordinates?
>>
>> Thanks for any help,
>> Shane
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> postgis-users mailing list
>> postgis-users at postgis.refractions.net
>> http://postgis.refractions.net/mailman/listinfo/postgis-users
>>
> _______________________________________________
> postgis-users mailing list
> postgis-users at postgis.refractions.net
> http://postgis.refractions.net/mailman/listinfo/postgis-users
> 

-- 

______________________________________________________________
Shane Byrne  -  University of Arizona  - Lunar & Planetary Lab
______________________________________________________________
Email: shane at lpl.arizona.edu              Phone: (928)556-7235
Web  : http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~shane  Fax  : (928)556-7014
______________________________________________________________
Mail : USGS - Astrogeology Division,
        2255 North Gemini Drive, Flagstaff, AZ 86001, US.
______________________________________________________________