vyperdatum 0.3.43

Vyperdatum with built-in regional datums, proj.db, and vdatum vector files.

Vyperdatum

Vyperdatum is a NOAA OCS/NBS toolkit for performing high-accuracy vertical datum transformations using NOAA’s separation grids within the modern PROJ/GDAL ecosystem. It provides a high-level Transformer interface that builds PROJ pipelines from a source CRS (crs_from) to a target CRS (crs_to), and applies them consistently to point cloud and raster formats (e.g. GeoTIFF, BAG, VRBAG, LAZ, NPZ, and GeoParquet).

The goal of Vyperdatum is to make it easy to transform coastal and hydrographic data between tidal, orthometric, and ellipsoidal vertical datums (for example, NAD83(2011) ellipsoid heights to MLLW or NAVD88) while preserving full coordinate reference system metadata so that transformations are transparent and reproducible.

Typical use cases include:

• Normalizing hydrographic surveys to charting datums for ENC/RNC and bathymetric products
• Building seamless coastal DEMs and bathymetric mosaics from surveys referenced to different vertical frames
• Preparing inputs for coastal flood, storm surge, and inundation models that require a specific vertical datum
• Converting between ellipsoidal, orthometric, and tidal datums for coastal GNSS/GNSS-tide workflows

Under the hood, Vyperdatum uses a PROJ database augmented with NOAA grids and metadata. Transformation steps can be inferred automatically from crs_from/crs_to, or prescribed explicitly when you need fine-grained control over the pipeline. NOAA’s grid files and the updated proj.db are not bundled with the package; instead, you download them separately and point the VYPER_GRIDS environment variable at their location.

Vyperdatum [definition]

Installation

Vyperdatum requires GDAL which can be installed from the conda's conda-forge channel. Below, we first create a conda environment, install GDAL and Vperdatum.

conda create -n vd python=3.11
conda activate vd
conda install -c conda-forge proj=9.4 gdal=3.8.4 python-pdal
pip install vyperdatum

Before running vyperdatum, you need to download NOAA's datum files and the updated proj.db . Once downloaded, create a persistent environment variable VYPER_GRIDS to hold the path to directory where the downloaded grids and proj.db are located.

Usage

Vyperdatum offers a Transformer class to handle the transformation of point and raster data. The Transformer class applies transformation from crs_from to crs_to coordinate reference system. By default the transformation steps will be determined automatically:

from vyperdatum.transformer import Transformer

crs_from = "EPSG:6346"            # NAD83(2011) 17N
crs_to = "EPSG:6346+NOAA:98"      # NAD83(2011) 17N + MLLW
tf = Transformer(crs_from=crs_from,
                 crs_to=crs_to,
                 )

Alternatively, you may manually prescribe the transformation steps:

from vyperdatum.transformer import Transformer

crs_from = "EPSG:6346"            # NAD83(2011) 17N
crs_to = "EPSG:6346+NOAA:98"      # NAD83(2011) 17N + MLLW
steps = [{"crs_from": "EPSG:6346", "crs_to": "EPSG:6318", "v_shift": False},
         {"crs_from": "EPSG:6319", "crs_to": "EPSG:6318+NOAA:98", "v_shift": True},
         {"crs_from": "EPSG:6318", "crs_to": "EPSG:6346", "v_shift": False}
         ]
tf = Transformer(crs_from=crs_from,
                 crs_to=crs_to,
                 steps=steps
                 )

Once an instance of the Transformer class is created, the transform() method can be called. Vyperdatum supports all GDAL-supported drivers, variable resolution BAG, LAZ and NPZ point-cloud files.

transform

tf.transform(input_file=<PATH_TO_INPUT_RASTER_FILE>,
             output_file=<PATH_TO_OUTPUT_RASTER_FILE>
             )

You may also, directly call the file-specific transform methods instead of the generic Transformer.transform() method:

Click to see pseudo-code examples

# dircet point transformation. x, y, z can be arrays, too.
x, y, z = 278881.198, 2719890.433, 0
xt, yt, zt = tf.transform_points(x, y, z, always_xy=True, allow_ballpark=False)

# GDAL-supported raster transform  
tf.transform_raster(input_file=<PATH_TO_INPUT_RASTER_FILE>,
                    output_file=<PATH_TO_OUTPUT_RASTER_FILE>
                    )

# VRBAG transform
tf.transform_vrbag(input_file=<PATH_TO_INPUT_VRBAG_FILE>,
                   output_file=<PATH_TO_OUTPUT_VRBAG_FILE>
                   )

# LAZ transform
tf.transform_laz(input_file=<PATH_TO_INPUT_LAZ_FILE>,
                 output_file=<PATH_TO_OUTPUT_LAZ_FILE>
                 )

# NPZ transform
tf.transform_npz(input_file=<PATH_TO_INPUT_NPZ_FILE>,
                 output_file=<PATH_TO_OUTPUT_NPZ_FILE>
                 )

Documentation

For a quick start, more detailed descriptions or search through the API, see Vyperdatums's documentation at: https://vyperdatum.readthedocs.io.