Before You Watch

Now that we've looked at the basics of managing vector data for analysis, let's look at the analysis tasks we use for raster data. Note that although it is split into a series of three lectures, you will note that the analysis tasks for raster data is considerably less complex than vector. That is because raster data has a relatively simple data structure compared to vector. Since all of the cells in the grid will be the same spatial resolution, the analysis tasks will look a bit differently as well. In other words, these operations do not manage attributes and geometry the same way, but rather focus on attributes since the geometry stays relatively the same throughout the grid (exception being spatial aggregation as you will see). So this week will focus on the fundamental Raster Operations we use in GIS: Local, Focal, Zonal, and Global.

Key Takeaways

By the end of this lecture (and associated lab 6) you should be familiar with the following:

Understand the basics of how attribute data is organized for raster, including associated raster data types
Understand the basics of how we calculate and manage both attributes for raster objects (geometry assigned by resolution)
Be able to conduct a series of Local, Focal, Zonal, and Global tasks using Raster data (lab 6).

Video