Lecture 9

Raster Basics

GIS AND REMOTE SENSING

Hemalie Nandalal
 Raster Basics
• Raster datasets represent geographic features
by dividing the world into discrete square or
rectangular cells laid out in a grid
• Each cell has a value that is used to represent
some characteristic of that location, such as
temperature, elevation, or a spectral value
 Raster Basics
Raster datasets are commonly used for
representing and managing
•imagery,
•digital elevation models, and
•numerous other phenomena
Often rasters are used as a way to represent
point, line, and polygon features
Often rasters are used as a way to represent point, line,
and polygon features
Example below, you can see how a series of polygons
would be represented as a raster dataset
 Geographic properties of raster data
• Four geographic properties are typically recorded for all raster
datasets
• Raster datasets have a special way of defining geographic location
• Once the cells or pixels can be accurately georeferenced, it's easy to
have an ordered list of all the cell values in a raster
• Geographic properties for a raster typically include
– Its coordinate system
– A reference coordinate or x,y location (typically the upper left or the
lower left corner of the raster)
– A cell size
– The count of rows and columns
• This information can be used to find the location of any specific cell.
By having this information available, the raster data structure lists
all the cell values in order from the upper left cell along each row to
the lower right cell, as illustrated below.
• Raster data is typically much larger in size than
features
 What is raster data?
In its simplest form, a raster consists of a matrix
of cells (or pixels) organized into rows and
columns (or a grid) where each cell contains a
value representing information
 Rasters as basemaps

A common use of raster data in a GIS is as a background

display for other feature layers
 Rasters as surface maps

Rasters are well suited for representing data that

changes continuously across a landscape (surface).
 Rasters as thematic maps

Rasters representing thematic data can be derived from

analyzing other data.
A common analysis application is classifying a satellite
image by land-cover categories.
 Why store data as a raster?
Sometimes you don't have the choice of storing your data as a raster;
for example, imagery is only available as a raster

The advantages of storing your data as a raster are as follows:

• A simple data structure—A matrix of cells with values representing
a coordinate and sometimes linked to an attribute table
• A powerful format for advanced spatial and statistical analysis
• The ability to represent continuous surfaces and perform surface
analysis
• The ability to uniformly store points, lines, polygons, and surfaces
• The ability to perform fast overlays with complex datasets
 Why store data as a raster?
There are other considerations for storing your data as a raster that
may convince you to use a vector-based storage option
For example:
• There can be spatial inaccuracies due to the limits imposed by the
raster dataset cell dimensions.
• Raster datasets are potentially very large
• Resolution increases as the size of the cell decreases; however,
normally cost also increases in both disk space and processing
speeds
• For a given area, changing cells to one-half the current size requires
as much as four times the storage space, depending on the type of
data and storage techniques used.
 General characteristics of raster data
• In raster datasets, each cell (which is also
known as a pixel) has a value
General characteristics of raster data
General characteristics of raster data
The dimension of the cells can be as large or as small as needed
• square kilometer, square foot, or even square centimeter.
• cell size determines how coarse or fine the patterns or features in
the raster will appear
• smaller the cell size, the smoother or more detailed the raster will
be
• greater the number of cells, the longer it will take to process, and it
will increase the demand for storage space
Cell size is too large, information may be lost or subtle patterns may be
obscured
• if the cell size is larger than the width of a road, the road may not
exist within the raster dataset
 Raster bands
• Some rasters have a single band, or layer (a
measure of a single characteristic), of data,
• Others have multiple bands
– An example of a single-band raster dataset is a
digital elevation model (DEM)
– Each cell in a DEM contains only one value
representing surface elevation
 Raster bands
• Also have a single-band orthophoto
• Called a panchromatic or grayscale image
• Most satellite imagery has multiple bands,
typically containing values within a range or
band of the electromagnetic spectrum.
 Display Rasters
There are three main ways to display (render) single-band
raster datasets:

• Using two colors—In a binary image, each cell has a value

of 0 or 1 and is often displayed using black and white
– used for displaying scanned maps with simple line work
• Grayscale—In a grayscale image, each cell has a value from
0 to another number, such as 255 or 65535
– black-and-white aerial photographs.
• Color map—One way to represent colors on an image is
with a color map. A set of values is coded to match a
defined set of red, green, and blue (RGB) values
 Display Rasters
When there are multiple bands, every cell
location has more than one value associated
with it
 Display Rasters
A combination of any three of the available
bands in a multiband raster dataset can be
used to create RGB composites.
 Display Rasters
• Stretch function
• Stretch function enhances an image by changing
properties such as brightness, contrast, and
gamma through multiple stretch types
• Stretch types include
• Minimum-Maximum,
• Standard Deviation,
• Percent Clip, and
• None
 Analysis of Raster Data
• Regardless of whether your cell-based data is
an image from a satellite or aerial sensor or a
raster dataset representing gravitational
modeling or a DEM, there are many ways that
you can work this data when doing an analysis
 Analysis of Raster Data
• There are ArcGIS extensions that enhance the analysis
capabilities of raster data
• ArcGIS Spatial Analyst extension—This extension provides a
comprehensive set of advanced spatial modeling and
analysis tools that allow you to perform integrated raster
and vector analysis.
• ArcGIS 3D Analyst extension—This extension allows you to
effectively visualize, analyze, and generate surface data and
provides the tools for three-dimensional modeling and
analysis.
• ArcGIS Geostatistical Analyst extension—This extension
provides the capability for surface modeling using
deterministic and geostatistical methods.
 Joining Raster data sets
Joining rasters are called as mosaicking