Geography Imaging for MAP

The present file gives general informations about the package gi_map and describes the installation and usage procedures.

CONTENTS

• Rights
• General information
• Installation
• Usage
  • Setup File dcw_settings
  • Setup "Input File List" File
  • Running gi_map
• Add station from MAP database

Rights

The gi_map package is using commercial data provided with the Digital Chart of the World (DCW) package. Before using gi_map, you must purchase the DCW CD (provided with a licence) which gives you the legal right to use the subset of data included in the gi_map package.

The CD and the package, containing the freeware gi_map and the subset of data, are available at MAP PO for can.$ 50 .

General information

The package gi_map is a set of vectorial data in latitude-longitude coordinates (for more information about the data source, please read dcwcd.doc; while reading it, please keep in mind that data delivered with the gi_map package form only a subset of the data included in the DCW CD) provided with an image making Fortran77 program using NCAR Graphic drawing subroutines.

This gi_map package has been designed at RPN especially to support graphics need of the MAP scientists working on the "MAP hi-resolution domain". Several geographical projections are available, such as polar stereographic, Mercator, etc.

Among available data, city and airport names, geographical and political contours, rivers and lakes can be displayed over a certain region and superposed over meteorological fields to give landmarks. Also available, synoptic and surface stations coordinates (such as provided by MDC) could be used to compare station data to model output.

Here are some examples of output made with gi_map.exe (These gif images have been obtained through the grab command of XV over a metafile displayed by idt.)

A view of rivers, lakes, glacial and political limit covering Switzerland.
To see the setting files used to output this picture: dcw_settings, InputFileList

A close zoom over BRIG a city along Swiss-Italian border (MAP episode number 2) with some supplementary surface stations shown in red (hand made compilation, i.e. with some cutoff errors on latitude longitude coor.).
To see the setting files used to output this picture: dcw_settings, InputFileList

Extract the archive file

The package gi_map is delivered in a zipped archive file. The complete uncompressed archive is 40 Mb, be sure you have enough disk space before decompression.

To uncompress the package and extract the archive, use the following inline command:

	gunzip gi_map.tar.gz
	tar xvf gi_map.tar

This will create a directory named gi_map under which the files (and directory) listed below are included.

Make the executable (Compiling)

The NCAR Graphics library MUST be available.
To make the executable, use the simple inline command:

			ncargf77 -o gi_map.exe gi_map.f

This will create the executable file: gi_map.exe

Usage and Settings

Before running gi_map.exe you might want to adjust parameters for your own case study. These parameters are set in 2 files (versions with default parameters are included in the package), dcw_settings and InputFileList.

The File: dcw_settings

The file dcw_settings contains a namelist describing the general settings used by gi_map.exe. The variables that could be adjusted are:

Example of the dcw_settings file:

 &dcw_set
  tables_path = "./Tables/"
  inputfilelist = "InputFileList"
  viewport = 2.0, 19.0, 38.0, 50.0
  mapproj  = "ST"
  mappar   = 90.,  0., 10.
  bgcolor  = 1.,   1.,   1.
  fgcolor1 = 0.,   0.,   0.
  fgcolor2 = 1.,   0.,   0.
  fgcolor3 = 0.,   1.,   0.
  fgcolor4 = 0.,   0.,   1.
  fgcolor5 = 0.6,  0.095,0.95
  fgcolor6 = 0.5,  0.5,  0.97
  fgcolor7 = 0.9,  0.5,  0.1
  fgcolor8 = 0.3,  0.3,  0.3
  fgcolor9 = 0.984,0.690,0.31
  csiz_big = 0.0095
  csiz_sma = 0.0065
 &end

The "Input File List" file

The input file list specifies all the DCW data file names corresponding to the class of objects (like rivers, lakes, sea shore, political contours, city names...) you want to display. To know which kind of object corresponds to a specific file name, look in desc_tables or in DCW_TABLES.

The input file list structure is FORMAT(A23, 2X, I5, 2X, I1, 2X, I1):

When editing the input file list file, you must respect the specified format.

e.g.:

ppp01.llt                04996  1  0

It will display "populated places shown by dot" (file: ppp01.llt)
The file has 4996 lines of data (you can obtain it with: wc -l ppp01.llt, minus 1)
We chose the color 1 (black by default)
It is a character type of information (.llt) that we want in size csiz_big (number 0, user's choice).

The description of the class of object (or file content) corresponding to each DCW data file name is in the file: desc_tables. Since some object type files are huge, some of them have been split into many subfiles corresponding to a square box of 5 by 5 deg. Theses files have a supplementary name extension corresponding to the latlon S-W coor. of the box. (e.g.: .35n015e) Be sure you include all those sub-files in the InputFileList when you want these objects displayed.

Running gi_map.exe

When you run gi_map.exe (simply execute the command line: gi_map.exe)

• It will try to read the dcw_settings file. If not present in the current working directory, it will use the default configuration.
• It will read the InputFileList file (MUST be present, there is no default configuration)
• It will process the selected data files (those listed in InputFileList) through NCAR Graphics functions to output the graphic in the file: gmeta.
• You can use any displaying program that supports the NCAR Metafile standard to visualize gmeta (like idt, ictrans), use an NCAR graph processor (like ictrans) to superpose meteorological fields or convert the metafile to many other formats.
  (By itself, gi_map.exe does not have any displaying or graphic editing capability.)
• Useful informations for post-processing NCAR Metafile could be obtained at the NCAR graphics web site.

REMARK:

• Since the DCW data files constitute a relatively big database, you can delete DCW data files corresponding to classes of object you think you will never use to save disk space.
  
• Files containing text objects (.llt) could be easily edited to remove or add information (like city names or rain-gauge stations).
  
• Spelling typo errors are seem to exist in the DCW subset used by gi_map. While this is not under our control, it is very easy for gi_map users to correct these glitches.

Add station names from MAP database

You could add surface station names, from the MAP database, to the geographical map in a few steps:

1. Go to the MAP database
2. Select MAP surface stations
3. In Available fields select:
   • Name of the Station
   • Latitude
   • Longitude
4. Select the appropriate property of the stations to restrict the number of selected stations (the map could easily be overloaded).
5. Select Output to: ASCII-Table with Separator: SPACE
6. Execute Query
7. To save: File -> Save As (save as Text)
   The file must be saved under the directory containing all the other data files used by gi_map (by default, these files are under the directory: Tables/).
8. Edit the file you just saved
   Change the header
   Before the first station name, there must be only one line containing only those 3 left aligned capital letters: MAP
   e.g., the result of the query:

   "STATIONNAME" "LATITUDE" "LONGITUDE"
   "AIGLE" 46.33 6.908
   "ALTDORF" 46.86 8.63
   "CHUR-EMS" 46.86 9.529
   

   should become:

   MAP
   "AIGLE" 46.33 6.908
   "ALTDORF" 46.86 8.63
   "CHUR-EMS" 46.86 9.529
   

9. Include this file name in the "Input File List" file as other data files.

Questions and Comments

For questions and comments (bugs and others), please send an e-mail
(subject gi_map.f, info request, or gi_map.f, comments) to:
Stephane.Chamberland@ec.gc.ca