elevation 0.9.7

Easy access to global terrain digital elevation models, SRTM 30m DEM and SRTM 90m DEM.

Global geographic elevation data made easy. Elevation provides easy download, cache and access of the global datasets SRTM 30m Global 1 arc second V003 elaborated by NASA and NGA and SRTM 90m Digital Elevation Database v4.1 elaborated by CGIAR-CSI.

Installation

Install the latest version of Elevation from the Python Package Index:

$ pip install elevation

The following dependencies need to be installed and working:

• GNU make

• curl

• unzip

• GDAL command line tools

The following command runs some basic checks and reports common issues:

$ eio selfcheck
Your system is ready.

GNU make, curl and unzip come pre-installed with most operating systems. The best way to install GDAL command line tools varies across operating systems and distributions, please refer to the GDAL install documentation.

Command line usage

Identify the geographic bounds of the area of interest and fetch the DEM with the eio command. For example to clip the SRTM1 30m DEM of the area of Rome, around 42N 12.5W, to the Rome-DEM.tif file:

$ eio clip -o Rome-DEM.tif --bounds 12.35 41.8 12.65 42

The --bounds option accepts latitude and longitude coordinates (more precisely in geodetic coordinates in the WGS84 refernce system EPSG:4326 for those who care) given as left bottom right top similarly to the rio command form rasterio.

The first time an area is accessed Elevation downloads the data tiles from the USGS or CGIAR-CSI servers and caches them in GeoTiff compressed formats, subsequent accesses to the same and nearby areas are much faster.

It is possible to pre-populate the cache for an area, for example to seed the SRTM3 90m DEM of Italy execute:

$ eio --product SRTM3 seed --bounds 6.6 36.6 18.6 47.1

The eio command as the following sub-commands and options:

$ eio --help
Usage: eio [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

Options:
  --product [SRTM1|SRTM3]  DEM product choice (default: 'SRTM1').
  --cache_dir DIRECTORY    Root of the DEM cache folder (default: [...]).
  --make_flags TEXT        Options to be passed to make (default: '-k').
  --help                   Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  clean      Clean up the cache from temporary files.
  clip       Clip the DEM to given bounds.
  distclean  Clean up the cache from temporary files.
  info
  seed       Seed the DEM to given bounds.
  selfcheck  Audits your installation for common issues.

The seed sub-command:

$ eio seed --help
Usage: eio seed [OPTIONS]

Options:
  --bounds FLOAT...  Output bounds: left bottom right top.
  --help             Show this message and exit.

The clip sub-command:

$ eio clip --help
Usage: eio clip [OPTIONS]

Options:
  -o, --output PATH  Path to output file. Existing files will be overwritten.
  --bounds FLOAT...  Output bounds: left bottom right top.
  --help             Show this message and exit.

Python API

Every command has a corresponding API function in the elevation module:

import elevation

# clip the SRTM1 30m DEM of the area around Rome and save it to Rome-DEM.tif
elevation.clip(bounds=(12, 41.5, 13, 42.5), output='Rome-DEM.tif')

# seed the SRTM3 90m DEM of Italy
elevation.seed(product='SRTM3', bounds=(6.6 36.6 18.6 47.1))

Project resources

Documentation	http://elevation.bopen.eu
Support	https://stackoverflow.com/search?q=python+elevation
Development	https://github.com/bopen/elevation
Download	https://pypi.python.org/pypi/elevation
Code quality

Contributing

Contributions are very welcome. Please see the CONTRIBUTING document for the best way to help. If you encounter any problems, please file an issue along with a detailed description.

Authors:

• B-Open Solutions srl - @bopen - http://bopen.eu

• Alessandro Amici - @alexamici

License

Elevation is free and open source software distributed under the terms of the Apache License, Version 2.0.