HexASCII: A file format for cartographical hexagonal rasters |
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| Authors: | Luís Moreira de Sousa João Paulo Leitão |
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| Institution: | Urban Water Management Department (SWW), Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (EAWAG), Dübendorf, Switzerland |
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| Abstract: | Hexagonal segmentations of space have long been known for their advantages vis à vis squared partitions in discretizing spatial variables, be it natural phenomena or human‐related features. However, readily available and easy‐to‐use tools to manipulate and interact with hexagonal rasters remain widely unavailable today. This article presents a first step to enable the use of hexagonal rasters in the GIS field. A format to encode cartographical hexagonal meshes as simple ASCII files is specified through a context‐free grammar. Named HexASCII, this file format provides a simple means of storing and sharing such rasters. A set of simple tools based on the HexASCII format is presented, allowing their creation and basic interaction with traditional GIS software. |
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