[R-sig-DB] [R-sig-Geo] Raster data and MySQL

[Roger Bivand]

On Wed, 19 Apr 2006, Toad 2000 wrote:

> Hi Folks,
> 
> Hope this isn't too far off topic + apologies for cross posting if you're on 
> both lists...
> 
> I'm in the lucky(?) position of setting up an archive of geophysical 
> (meteorological) data from scratch. R has been my working 
> language/environment for the last few years. I've had plenty of need for the 
> maptools + rgdal packages.  Ditto the RMySQL package but never inconjuction 
> with spatial analyses.  My worlds are about to collide.
> 
> The data come in two types: Station data (irregular grid, irregular times, 
> lots of missing values) and Model output (regular grid, regular times, no 
> missing data).  The data come in hour after hour, day after day.
> 
> Typical queries can be spatial (e.g. what did the rainfall over a given post 
> code area look like yesterday?), temporal (what were the houlry wind speeds 
> at a specific point for last month?), or both (what was the mean temperature 
> across the UK last year).
> 
> So how best to store the data to facilitate such queries?  This is where I 
> hope you can help! :)

Could you have a look at aRT? It has an R component, a database (typically 
MySQL) component, and uses Terralib as glue:

http://www.est.ufpr.br/art/

I think you can use RMySQL directly for non-spatial tasks too. Terralib 
has well-developed spatial data types.

> 
> My initial thoughts are to invoke the spatial capabilites of MySQL.  The 
> station data seem easy enough to store as POINT or MULTIPOINT and set up a 
> spatial index and another on the time stamp.  Spatial queries can be 
> performed using a WKB (Well Known Binary - new to me;) representation of the 
> region of interest.
> 
> I'm stuck on the model data.  I could break it down into points and proceed 
> as above but this seems grossly inefficient.  I was hoping to find a RASTER 
> data type and store the grids in that.  Trouble is, I could be missing 
> something, that I can't seem to find anything like one in MySQL.  Don't know 
> about Postgre or SQL sever.  I'm open to suggestions.
> 
> Your hopefully, T
> 
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-- 
Roger Bivand
Economic Geography Section, Department of Economics, Norwegian School of
Economics and Business Administration, Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen,
Norway. voice: +47 55 95 93 55; fax +47 55 95 95 43
e-mail: Roger.Bivand using nhh.no