Mapping tools¶
Tools¶
Recent developments in the NVS VegX mapping tool have led me to wonder if it's possible to use that tool for some or all of our mapping. I further realized that we actually have at least four different mapping tools which we can use to map between various formats of vegetation data:
| Tool | Developer | Maps to | Inputs | GUI? | Platform | Language | Source available? | Mappings? |
| VegBranch | Mike Lee | VegBank | CSV, other formats? | yes | Windows | Visual Basic/MS Access | yes | yes (script) |
| NVS VegX | Shirley | VegX, soon also DBs | CSV, XML?, soon also databases | yes | Windows | .NET C# | soon | see below |
| CTFS mappings | Shash | VegX | CTFS database, CTFS export | ? | ? | ? | soon | soon |
| BIEN map | myself | VegX, VegBIEN | CSV, VegX, denormalized DBs, soon normalized DBs | no | cross-platform | Python | yes | yes |
The tools are all in different stages of completion and support different features, platforms, formats, etc. During Thursday's conference call, do we want to discuss which tools to use for our various mapping tasks? We have shelved the graphical mapping tool, but we still need to settle on a robust way to do the mapping before we have that.
I think it would be useful to look at the source code of the other mapping tools to see if there are algorithms or features we can use, or if we want to switch to another tool entirely.
NVS VegX¶
- sample mappings at
nimoy:/home/bien/raw_data/nvs/VegX/Example data/Manawx00DiamVegXSimple mappings.xml