{"id":1528,"date":"2021-02-28T10:53:40","date_gmt":"2021-02-28T10:53:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wetransform.eu\/?post_type=news-and-events&p=1528"},"modified":"2022-07-12T12:26:30","modified_gmt":"2022-07-12T12:26:30","slug":"geopackage-encoding","status":"publish","type":"news-and-events","link":"https:\/\/wetransform.to\/de\/neuigkeiten-veranstaltungen\/geopackage-encoding\/","title":{"rendered":"Making INSPIRE Data More Useful: The GeoPackage Encoding"},"content":{"rendered":"

The default encodings for INSPIRE, as per INSPIRE Data Specifications<\/a>, are usually GML for vector data and GeoTIFF for raster coverages. However, since a single encoding is not optimal for all use cases, alternative encodings can also be used. In our previous blog post<\/a> about alternate encodings, we already explained how alternative encodings can help to improve the data usability.<\/p>\n

The GML default encoding works very well for system-to-system interoperability. But visualizing and analyzing large complex INSPIRE GML files in a GIS can be challenging. Thus, we have been working on supporting Geopackage, an alternative INSPIRE encoding that can be used directly on desktop.<\/p>\n

How does this help me?<\/h2>\n

In our view GeoPackage is the optimal, open format for delivering medium to large sized data sets to GIS users. It is a single file that can store tables, vector geometries and rasters. It is extensible and fast to access. It can deal with simple and more detailed data models well. There is even the option to store views and styles. And GeoPackage does not have some of the shortcomings of GML such as 11-character attribute limits, unknown encodings, and missing or incomplete projection files.<\/p>\n

Like INSPIRE GML datasets, GeoPackages are interoperable. In addition, GeoPackages can be used across all enterprise and personal computing environments. GeoPackages work much better even in environments with limited connectivity and bandwidth, such as mobile devices. Below you can find a comparison of GeoPackage and GML, and see how they complement each other: <\/p>\n

\"GeoPackage<\/p>\n

How can I implement GeoPackage effectively, and what transformation rules should I consider?<\/h2>\n

There were always requests to add GeoPackage to the list of supported formats for hale\u00bbstudio. To this end, we added a GeoPackage Reader and a Writer that was released with hale\u00bbstudio 4.0<\/a>. The Writer can create GeoPackages from scratch, including the schema and the metadata. This work was possible thanks to funding from Umweltbundesamt Austria<\/a> and Rijkswaterstaat Netherlands<\/a>, and support from the European Environmental Agency<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You can load data such as a shapefile, a FileGeodatabase, or simple GML. Then you map that data to a GeoPackage-specific schema or even an XML schema. Finally, you export your transformed data. If you already have GeoPackage source data, you can load it directly into hale\u00bbstudio and use it in a transformation project.<\/p>\n

The UML to Geopackage (U2G) rule was developed<\/a> by UNIZAR, and has two parts:<\/p>\n