UNC
Spatial Allocator Version 4.2 (05/30/2014)
The Spatial Allocator (SA) is a set
of tools that helps users manipulate and generate data files related to
emissions and air quality modeling. The tools perform functions similar to
Geographic Information Systems, but are provided to the modeling community free
of charge. In addition, the tools are designed to support some of the unique
aspects of the file formats used for Community Multiscale
Air Quality (CMAQ), Sparse Matrix Operator Kernel Emissions (SMOKE), and Weather
Research and Forecasting (WRF) modeling.
The MIMS Spatial Allocator is
licensed as open-source software and provided at no cost because its
development was sponsored by EPA. The Spatial Allocator uses GIS industry
standard ESRI shapefiles, image files supported by
GDAL, netCDF files and plain text data files as input
and output data. The SA system includes three components developed for specific
applications:
- Vector Tools (html):
The Vector Tools allow you to develop individual spatial surrogates, to
change the map projection of Shapefiles, to
remap spatial data from one spatial domain to another (e.g. counties to
grids, fine grids to coarse grids), and to perform other types of spatial
manipulation without using a GIS. Written in C language and developed for
32-bit Linux systems. Provides binaries are built on a 32-bit Linux
operating system.
- Raster Tools (html):
The Raster Tools allow you to process land use data, satellite data, and
agricultural fertilizer application data for meteorological and air
quality modeling, particularly within the WRF/CMAQ modeling systems. Written
in C++ language and developed for Linux systems. Provides binaries are built on a 64-bit
Linux operating system.
- Surrogate Tools (html): The Surrogate Tools allow you to manage the creation
of large sets of spatial surrogates and also supports merging and gapfilling of surrogates. Surrogate Tools are written
in Java they are provided in a java archive (.jar file) that can be used
on Linux systems for which Java 1.5/later and Vector Tools are installed.
Open source packages used:
- Vector SA uses: I/O API and NetCD libraries compiled using pgcc, but PROJ4 compiled with gcc.
- Raster SA uses: GDAL, GEOS, PROJ4, NETCDF, HDF4, HDF5, and ANN in the C++ language compiled with gcc for Linux systems.
Instructions
for downloading and installing.
Release Notes: SA 4.2 contains updated Raster Tools and Surrogate Tools.
The installation directory is set by the environment
variable SA_HOME in the $SA_HOME/bin/sa_setup.csh
file. This setup file also contains all open-source library paths. Users need
to include the following line in their .cshrc files:
source
{SA_HOME directory}/bin/sa_setup.csh
The SA system contains the following folders:
- bin – contains 64-bit executable raster tools, 32-bit executable
vector tools, and set up file
- src – contains raster, vector, and library source codes
- data – contains required and sample data files. The sub-directory sat
is used to contain land use and satellite input data
- raster_scripts – contains sample script files to run raster tools
- scripts – contains sample script files to run vector tools
- srgtools – contains the Surrogate Tools Java package and sample files to
compute multiple surrogates
- output – output directory
- util – utility programs