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During the ESO session at the 2015 Summer ESIP meetings, we discussed Geospatial Vector Formats. The general feeling after the discussion was that there is no specific "best" format. We agreed to host a discussion page where people can follow up on some of the material presented.
| Format | Standards body | ESO Standard | Reference link(s) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arc-Info .E00 | http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/formats/fdd/fdd000291.shtml |
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| DLG | SDTS | https://lta.cr.usgs.gov/Guides/usgs_dlg.html |
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| DWG | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.dwg |
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| DXF | http://www.autodesk.com/techpubs/autocad/acad2000/dxf/ |
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| ESRI File Geodatabase | http://www.esri.com/apps/products/download/#File_Geodatabase_API_1.4 |
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| GeoCSV | http://giswiki.hsr.ch/GeoCSV | Could be interesting to ESDSWG ASCII WG | ||
| GeoJSON | IETF draft-butler-geojson-05 | https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-butler-geojson-05rfc7946 | Good transfer format, maybe not good archival format | |
| GeoPackage | OGC 12-128r11 | http://www.geopackage.org/ | Archival format? | |
| GeoRSS | OGC 06-050r3 (white paper) | http://www.georss.org/ | Specialized for Atom/RSS results | |
| GML | OGC 07-036 | http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/gml | Have to develop profile or use one that's already been developed.
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| HDF | yes (HDF-5, HDF EOS 5) | https://earthdata.nasa.gov/standards/hdf5 | Mostly used for gridded data.
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| KML | OGC 07-147r2 | yes | http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/kml | OK for visualization, pretty limited set of clients |
| netCDF | OGC 10-090r3 / ESO | yes (classic and 4) | http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/netcdf https://earthdata.nasa.gov/standards/netcdf-4hdf5-file-format | Mostly used for gridded data
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| Shapefile | https://www.esri.com/library/whitepapers/pdfs/shapefile.pdf | Originally a proprietary format, now it's published. Used in Esri software.
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| TopoJSON | https://github.com/mbostock/topojson | Adds topology to GeoJSON, makes smaller files for data that has large multi-point geometries | ||
Interesting transfer format for bigger data sets | OGC 06-103r4 | http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/sfa | Useful as component of others | |
| OSM (OpenStreetMap) | http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_file_formats | Possibly useful for certain kinds of vector data. |
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