Rinx: a solution for information extraction from big raster datasets

Abstract. Processing Earth observation data modelled in a time-series of raster format is critical to solving some of the most complex problems in geospatial science ranging from climate change to public health. Researchers are increasingly working with these large raster datasets that are often terabytes in size. At this scale, traditional GIS methods may fail to handle the processing, and new approaches are needed to analyse these datasets. The objective of this work is to develop methods to interactively analyse big raster datasets with the goal of most efficiently extracting vector data over specific time periods from any set of raster data. In this paper, we describe RINX (Raster INformation eXtraction) which is an end-to-end solution for automatic extraction of information from large raster datasets. RINX heavily utilises open source geospatial techniques for information extraction. It also complements traditional approaches with state-of-the- art high-performance computing techniques. This paper discusses details of achieving big temporal data extraction with RINX, implemented on the use case of air quality and climate data extraction for long term health studies, which includes methods used, code developed, processing time statistics, project conclusions, and next steps.