Introduction to Spatial Analysis

Day 3 - Raster Data

Jonathan Phillips

January, 2019

Raster Data

Raster Data

Raster Data

Raster Data

Raster Data

Raster Data

Raster Data

  • Satellites/planes capture a range of data depending on their sensors
    • Visible light, ultravoilet light, altitude, rain, gravity, etc.
    • Each ‘band’ is a separate raster image/layer
    • One band = greyscale
    • Multi-band = ex. Red, Green and Blue

Raster Data

  • Not a shapefile, because any image file (TIFF, BMP, PNG, JPEG) can be used
    • Don’t think of colours, but numeric values for every pixel
  • But we need to know where to map the pixels to the earth’s surface
    • So usually a ‘GeoTIFF’
    • Location defined by the corner pixels
    • Projection is still vital!
  • Resolution determined by pixel size
    • Google Maps is about 10m - 50cm resolution, depending on location
    • Storage is a challenge

Raster Data

Visualizing Raster Data

  • Raster data often makes no sense to the human eye
    • May appear all black, or all white
  • We have to focus on the interesting range of the data to make a clear contrast
    • QGIS tries to do this for us
    • Or we can ‘manipulate’ it manually
  • ‘Pseudocolour’ is also useful for single band images

Visualizing Raster Data

Visualizing Raster Data

Visualizing Raster Data

  • Scale: -32768 to 32768

Visualizing Raster Data

Visualizing Raster Data

  • Scale: -5 to 1731

Visualizing Raster Data

  • Scale: -250 to 1380

Visualizing Raster Data

  • Pseudocolour

Visualizing Raster Data

  • From Altitude to Slope: Digitel Elevation Model

Slope Analysis

  • Raster to Vector: Contours

Raster Calculations

  • Which pixels (places) are above >1000m?
    • Use a raster calculator
    • Pixels which are ‘TRUE’ show up in white

Raster Calculations

  • We can combine multiple rasters using basic maths
    • +, -, *, /
  • Pixel values in each cell are combined to create a new raster

Raster Calculations

  • Population change (as measured by night lights)

Raster Calculations

  • Population change (as measured by night lights)

Raster Calculations

  • Population change (as measured by night lights)

Rasters and Vectors

  • To change the boundaries of the raster we can ‘clip’ it to a vector shapefile

Rasters and Vectors

  • To change the boundaries of the raster we can ‘clip’ it to a vector shapefile

Rasters and Vectors

  • Sometimes the information in a raster is too detailed
  • We can simplify by averaging the raster values according to specific polygons
    • Average altitude in each province
    • Average income by neighbourhood
    • Average rainfall by country
  • These are called ‘Zonal Statistics’
    • We can calculate lots of different statistics

Rasters and Vectors

  • To change the boundaries of the raster we can ‘clip’ it to a vector shapefile

Rasters and Vectors

Country Average Rainfall (mm/day)
Malaysia 8mm
Indonesia 12mm
Philippines 4mm
Thailand 2mm
Singapore 5mm

Machine Learning with Raster Data

Poverty Mapping

Google Earth Engine

Collect Earth