Temporal data processing

Introduction

TGRASS is the temporal enabled GRASS GIS. It is available from GRASS GIS 7 onwards. TGRASS is completely metadata based, and managing temporal and spatial extent including temporal topology.

Terminology Overview

• Space time raster datasets (strds) are designed to manage raster map time series. Modules that process strds have the naming prefix t.rast.
• Space time 3D raster datasets (str3ds) are designed to manage 3D raster map time series. Modules that process str3ds have the naming prefix t.rast3d.
• Space time vector datasets (stvds) are designed to manage vector map time series. Modules that process stvds have the naming prefix t.vect.

Aggregation with defined granularity

Q: I need to aggregate a strds with a granularity of 1 year, but shifting the start day one month in each run, i.e.: changing the start_time to 2003-02-01, 2003-03-01, 2003-04-01 and so on... My question is: if i recursively change start_time with the 'where' parameter, will the module t.rast.aggregate "aggregate" to the next february, march, april (what i'd wish) or just till the end of 2003?

A: If you specify a granularity of a year, then the start time to perform the aggregation will always be shifted to the 1st January of the current year and the end time the 1st January of the next year (eg. 2002-01-01 - 2003-01-01).  If you wish to aggregate a full year but shifting one month forward then simply use a granularity of 12 months.

Generating time series input (FIND BETTER TITLE)

TODO: reformulate the question a bit

Q: I have a strds with 506 maps that correspond to 8-day composite products (11 years). I want to get the list of maps where "start_month" is January, February and so on... Now I want to use them as input in r.series (or t.rast.series), but how? Note that I do not want to aggregate maps by month, since I need to use the original maps belonging to each month. Is there a way to achieve that?

A: You can use the datetime functionality of SQLite to perform this task, this should work for January:

t.rast.list input=cla_null_mayor65 \
  where='start_time >= datetime(start_time, "start of year") and
  start_time <= datetime(start_time, "start of year", "1 month")'

References

• Gebbert, S., Pebesma, E., 2014. TGRASS: A temporal GIS for field based environmental modeling. Environmental Modelling & Software 53, 1-12 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2013.11.001 DOI])

See also

• Introduction: GRASS as a Temporal GIS by Sören Gebbert] (slides)
• Introduction to temporal modules (GRASS GIS manual)
• Available temporal modules (GRASS GIS manual)
• Temporal Extension (background info in trac)
• GRASS GSoC 2013 Temporal GIS Algebra for raster and vector data in GRASS