[hdf-forum] hdf5 to esri shape-file converter

[George N. White III]

On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 11:44 AM, Chandra Shekhar
Kumar<chandra.kumar at flagstonere.bm> wrote:

> I was looking for a converter tool to convert a given hdf5 file (.mh5) to
> esri shape-files(.shp) and vice versa.

What platform?

Matlab's mapping  toolbox has both hdf5 and shapefile support.  ENVI
also supports both hdf5 and shapefiles, but (as with Matlab) you would
probably need to write some code to import your data into  a vector
layer.

The R stats package has (limited) hdf5 read/write support as well as
extensive support for GIS.  If R can read your hdf 5 files then you
should be able to generate shapefiles.    The hdf5 support in R is
basically what one person needed to read the files they use, so you
may need to extend the existing library if your files aren't handled.
Can you post a link to a small sample file?

You will need to read the hdf5 file, convert to R's vector GIS
objects, and then write out the shapefile.

see: <http://geodacenter.asu.edu/r-spatial-projects> for more information

Rmap <http://www.maths.lancs.ac.uk/Software/Rmap/> has support for shapefiles.

Not all the 3rd party libraries used by the R packages are available
on all platforms.  I use MacOSX and the hdf5 library doesn't build
using
R64, for example.

>
>
>
> Does anyone has any idea about the same?
>
>
>
> Does anyone see any utility in developing this(if it doesn’t exists already
> somewhere)?

It would be nice to have a wiki that collected examples for tasks like this,
but all depends on having suitable sample data files.

Vendors could be encouraged to contribute examples for their software, so
there would be multiple examples for each task.

-- 
George N. White III <aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca>
Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia

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