The size and number of raster datasets available to the GIS professional is growing rapidly. The resolution and coverage of remote sensing platforms increases with every new generation of hardware. The physical number of satellites and other remote sensing platforms in operation is increasing year on year. Storing, managing, visualizing and processing this data is becoming increasingly challenging for data providers and consumers.
To meet these challenges, Precisely has developed a new raster storage format called Multi-Resolution Raster (MRR). It provides a flexible solution for the entire spectrum of industry requirements. It is a unifying and enabling technology. It unifies the storage of all kinds of raster data – imagery, spectral imagery, continuous gridded data and thematic data – and removes the barriers to working with different kinds of raster data in the same context. It enables the highest quality visualization and processing of raster data – at any scale and for a raster of any size.
The key enabling capabilities of the MRR format are listed below:
- Storage of image data, classified (thematic) data, continuous and discrete data.
- Removes all restrictions on the size of raster datasets which means it supports raster datasets of virtually unlimited size.
- Extends the concept of a raster from a simple 2D array of cells to an extensible, sparse matrix of tiles.
- Contains a data pyramid that provides access to data at any scale in linear time.
- Achieves efficient storage using lossless and lossy compression techniques via industry standard compression codecs.
- Supports the temporal dimension, allowing data to be accumulated and accessed by time.
- Supports a wide and extensible number of data types including complex numbers.
- Stores one or more multi-banded fields.
- Provides local registration and cell size for each field, and tile decimation.
- Computes and stores high quality statistics to support rendering.
- For simplicity, an MRR is contained within a single file on disk.