Visualising the height of the Netherlands

This project generates "evelation profiles" of horizontal cuts through the Netherlands. The visualisation can be found here:

https://lucasvandijk.nl/2018/02/visualising-the-height-of-the-netherlands/

Authors

• Lucas van Dijk
• Dorus Leliveld (@Tclv)

This project was created as part of the course Data Visualisation at Delft University of Technology.

Requirements

Visualisation itself

• Node.JS
• CoffeeScript
• Gulp + several plugins

Data preprocessing

• Python >= 3.4
• PostgreSQL >= 9.3
• PostGIS >= 2.1

Python Packages:

• geopy
• psycopg2
• SQLAlchemy
• Geoalchemy2
• Shapely
• requests
• clint
• python-slugify

Installation

Getting the code

1. Create a virtual environment

    $ pyvenv nl-height
    $ cd nl-height
   

2. Activate the environment

    $ source bin/activate
   

3. Clone the repository

    $ git clone https://github.com/lrvdijk/nl-height
   

4. Install Python requirements

    $ cd nl-height
    $ pip install -r requirements.txt
   

5. Install Node.JS requirements

    $ npm install
   

NB: Most of the code has been written about two years ago, I did not update to the latest and shiniest method for keeping track of NPM packages, JS build systems, etc.

Data preprocessing

1. Create a new PostgreSQL database, with PostGIS extension

    $ createdb nlheight
    $ psql -d nlheight
    psql> CREATE EXTENSION postgis;
   

2. Enter your database configuration

    $ cp config/seahouse.conf.tpl config/seahouse.conf
    $ vim config/seahouse.conf
   

3. Load AHN units shapefile into the database

    $ cd data/ahn/
    $ psql -d nlheight -f ahn_units.sql
   

4. Convert lo_x en lo_y columns to integer

    $ psql -d seahouse
    psql> ALTER TABLE ahn_units ALTER COLUMN lo_x TYPE integer USING
    lo_x::integer;
    psql> ALTER TABLE ahn_units ALTER COLUMN lo_y TYPE integer USING
    lo_y::integer;
   

5. Download all AHN datasets

    $ cd ../../
    $ python python/ahn-downloader.py
   

6. Extract all AHN zipfiles

    $ python python/ahn-extractor.py
   

7. Load AHN raster data into the database

    $ cd data/ahn/units/
    $ raster2pgsql -s 28992 -I -M -F -C -t 50x50 ahn2_5_*.tif ahn_raster > raster_data.sql
    $ psql -d nlheight -f raster_data.sql
   

8. Generate elevation profiles for a given location. Repeat this step for multiple locations.

    $ cd ../../../
    $ python python/dataset-gen.py Delft
   

Development Server

1. Run gulp, includes a file watcher with automatic reload

    $ gulp