The Spatial Allocator (SA) is a set of tools that helps users manipulate and generate data files related to emissions and air quality modeling. The tools perform functions similar to Geographic Information Systems (GIS), but are provided to the modeling community free of charge. In addition, the tools are designed to support some of the unique aspects of the file formats used for Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ), Sparse Matrix Operator Kernel Emissions (SMOKE), and Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) modeling.
The SA is licensed as open-source Linux software that was developed with funding from the U.S. EPA. The SA uses GIS industry standard ESRI shapefiles, image files supported by GDAL, netCDF files and plain text data files as input and output data.
The following sections are included in this manual:
Quick Start Guide. Abbreviated description of how to get up and running with the Spatial Allocator.
Extended Table of Contents: Detailed listing of contents within each chapter.
Chapter 1 (Introduction): SA background, goals, and terminology.
Chapter 2 (Installation): Instructions on how to obtain and install the SA.
Chapter 3 (Vector Tools): The Vector Tools are a group of programs that perform operations on ESRI Shapefiles. Examples include tools that allow you to develop individual spatial surrogates, to change the map projection of Shapefiles, to remap spatial data from one spatial domain to another (e.g. counties to grids, fine grids to coarse grids), and to perform other types of spatial data manipulations.
Chapter 4 (Raster Tools): The Raster Tools are programs that perform operations on land use data, satellite data, and agricultural fertilizer application data for meteorological and air quality modeling, particularly within the WRF/CMAQ modeling systems.
Chapter 5 (Surrogate Tools): The Surrogate Tools support the creation of large sets of spatial surrogates, which are used to process emissions data for regional air quaity modeling. The Surrogate Tools include utilities for merging and gapfilling spatial surrogates.
Chapter 6 (Support): How to get technical support for the Spatial Allocator.
Chapter 7 (Libraries): Third-party libraries and software used by the SA.
Chapter 8 (License): SA release license.
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Spatial Allocator User Manual (c) 2016