General

Some data providers share data in the widely used Geotiff image format. This format contains georeferenced images: one per file. In contradiction to often used formats for data exchange in the hydrometeorological community, this file does not store temporal characteristics in its metadata. Therefore only files can be imported which have a datetime stamp in the filename.

This import type is available in 2021.02 NA, 2022.02 and later.

Import specifics

Presently this import type has the following restrictions:

• supports only a single image per tiff file
• recognizes -9999 as missing value. Different missing values can be configured in the import module with element <missingValue>
• requires geometry configured in Grids.xml
• expects event time in the name of the tiff file. Otherwise time zero will be used as event time. The datetime pattern needs to be specified in <fileNameObservationDateTimePattern> (see below for an example)
• no idMapping is needed: the files are directly linked to the location and parameter of the configured timeSeriesSet
• unitConversion is only needed when an externUnit (<externUnit parameterId="Mypar1" unit="inch"/> ) is specified

Configuration example

<import>
	<general>
  	 	 <importType>GeoTiff</importType>
	 	 <folder>$REGION_HOME$/Import/grid</folder>
	         <fileNameObservationDateTimePattern>yyyyMMdd'T'HHmm'Z_MSC_Radar-Composite_CMHR_1km'</fileNameObservationDateTimePattern>
         </general>

	<timeSeriesSet>
		<moduleInstanceId>ImportGrid</moduleInstanceId>
		<valueType>grid</valueType>
		<parameterId>MyPar1</parameterId>
		<locationId>LocA</locationId>
		<timeSeriesType>external historical</timeSeriesType>	
		<timeStep unit="nonequidistant"/>
		<readWriteMode>add originals</readWriteMode>
	</timeSeriesSet>
</import>	

grid definition

Presently, the F12 - clipboard function is not able to read the grid geometry from geotiff files. Therefore use a program like ArcGIS or QGIS to convert a file to NetCDF or HDF and then use F12 - clipboard to get the correct grid extent.