Raymart Medroso Serc Salor

Two

Major Families of Data Types

Raster Vector

 location

is referenced by a grid cell in a rectangular array (matrix) attribute is represented as a single value for that cell much data comes in this form
images from remote sensing (LANDSAT, SPOT) scanned maps elevation data from USGS

 best

for continuous features:

elevation temperature soil type

land use

Reality

Raster Mode Model of Reality

 Raster

grid must cover the entire study area. Files can grow to enormous sizes for large study areas with small cell sizes. Attributes are limited and linking to tabular data is impractical. Adjacency is easy to determine, but topology is lacking. Raster grid cells are not aware and cannot have actions attached to them in the geodatabase.

 location

referenced by x,y coordinates, which can be linked to form lines and polygons attributes referenced through unique ID number to tables much data comes in this form
DIME and TIGER files from US Census DLG from USGS for streams, roads, etc census data (tabular)

 best

for features with discrete boundaries

property lines political boundaries transportation

Divided

into 3 subparts

Point Line

Polygons and Multiparts

1 2 3

Point 1 2 3 4
X

X X1 X2 X3 X4

Y Y1 Y2 Y3 Y4

Points in the World Out There

Vector Encoding

Resulting Image

Line
1

X
X11 X12
...

Y
Y11 Y12
...

1 3 2 4
X
2 3

X1n X21 X2n X31 X32

...

Y1n Y21 Y2n Y31 Y32

...

Lines in the World Out There

Vertex

X3n

Y3n

X41 X4n

Y41 Y4n

Node

Vector Encoding

Resulting Image

Polygons must close upon themselves, so that the first and last vertex are the same. Polygons may include internal rings that act as donut holes areas excluded from the surrounding polygon. Polygons (and points and lines) may also include multiple parts.