Fighting Raster GeoPackage with GDAL

As I’m still running Ubuntu 16.04 based Linux Mint, I have no access to GDAL 2.x repositories (except for ubuntugis, that I really don’t like to use). Provided with a GeoPackage raster file recently, I had to find a way to load it into QGIS, somehow. The solution is simple: Docker with gdal_translate.

Preparing the Docker container

I like using Docker for experiments that might leave the OS in an unexpected state (which is exactly what happens to me with ubuntugis repository whenever I use it. That’s why I don’t anymore.). A very simple Dockerfile keeps the troubles away from you.

FROM ubuntu:17.04
RUN apt update
RUN apt install -y gdal-bin

cd into the folder and build the image with docker build -t gdal .. Once ready, summon the daemon, run the container, mount the GeoPackage file to the container directory and you’re ready to rock.

docker run -v /path/to/geopackage:/home/ -it gdal

Raster GeoPackage to GeoTiff translation

With the container running, the raster GeoPackage to GeoTiff translation can be done easily with gdal_translate. Note I chose to cut the source file into tiles, because the gdal_translate was choking about the resulting size.

#!/bin/bash
SIZE=10000
ULX=-630000
ULY=-1135450
LRX=-560000
LRY=-1172479
COUNTER_X=0
COUNTER_Y=0

while [[ $ULX -lt $LRX ]]
do
    while [[ $ULY -gt $LRY ]]
    do
        echo $ULX, $(($ULX+$SIZE)), $ULY, $(($ULY-$SIZE))

        gdal_translate \
            -co TILED=YES \
            -co COMPRESS=DEFLATE \
            -co TFW=YES \
            -co NUM_THREADS=ALL_CPUS \
            -a_nodata 0 \
            -of GTiff \
            -projwin $ULX, $ULY, $(($ULX+$SIZE)), $(($ULY-$SIZE)) \
            -projwin_srs EPSG:5514 \
            data/detected.gpkg data/detected_${COUNTER_X}_${COUNTER_Y}.tiff

        ULY=$(($ULY-$SIZE))
        COUNTER_Y=$((COUNTER_Y+1))
    done
    ULX=$(($ULX+$SIZE))
    ULY=-1135450
    COUNTER_X=$((COUNTER_X+1))
done

Final Touch: Raster to Vector

After the GeoTiff is written to hard drive, inotifywait can be used to generate overviews. And with ease of calling gdal_polygonize.py on each of GeoTiffs…vector layer, at you service.