Hi, Thanks to all who replied. The short answer: GeoTIFF.
Between the responses here and some internal evaluation of information we have on users of our data we will likely go with just GeoTIFF format for distribution. I neglected to describe the community who commonly use our data; it's a bit of a cross-section. Social science users (commonly using R or another stats package), GIS users (Esri, Open Source), remote sensing (Envi), and climate modelers (custom software). GeoTIFF is supported by most software packages used in these communities and with loss-less compression it is easier to download and use than plain text. We will be offering tiled WMS and will consider exposing WCS services as well. Responses below, thanks again. Greg On Fri, Nov 14, 2014 at 9:32 AM, Greg Yetman <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, > > We distribute population data estimates (raster surfaces) and are trying > to choose one or two formats for downloads that will make using the data > easy for as many folks as possible. We also plan to make the data available > as a WMS tiled map service. > > Quick poll: what would your preferred format(s) for downloading raster > data (2D, between 5-18 GB in size) be? > > ASCII text (2-D array with header) > GeoTIFF (.tif) > NetCDF > Others? > > Please respond to me directly, I will post a summary to the list. > > TIA, > > Greg > > Andrew Turner <[email protected]> Nov 14 (3 days ago) to *Chris*, me I'll pipe in that I'm very interested in this as well. We are working to make ArcGIS have more export formats and love the idea of making raster as 'easy' as vector data has become. I like GeoTIFF - but perhaps Chris Helm has thoughts as well given his experience. Andrew Ian Turton <[email protected]> Nov 14 (3 days ago) to me I'd prefer a WCS over a WMS. Then I'd get a choice of how to download and could pick the area of interest. Maybe a geoserver instance would provide both tiled wms and wcs in all the outputs. Alex Mandel <[email protected]> Nov 14 (3 days ago) to me Who's the Audience? +1 GeoTiff with loseless compression for general users. For the science folks NetCDF but only if you're packing in time frames or some other dimension of bands. Avoid ASCII text, it's inefficient unless you plan to 7z it 1st. The other options mentioned both have widely used loseless compression methods and control over numeric size - Int, Float, Double etc. Also cut the chunks smaller 4GB or less, 2GB if you're worried about those many 32bitters still out there. Thanks, Alex Huffines, James <[email protected]> Nov 14 (3 days ago) to me GeoTiff is pretty universal so I would choose that format. Jim <[email protected]> Nov 14 (3 days ago) to geowanking .sid for file compression and visual clarity pertaining to the raster downloads. Jim
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