Vectors and Rasters

Benefits of Vector Data

• Vector Model can store individual features such as roads and parcels with a high degree of precision

Benefits of Vector Data

• Vector Model’s linked attribute table provides great flexibility in the number and type of attributes which can be stored about each feature

Benefits of Vector Data

• The vector model is ideally suited to mapmaking because of the high precision and detail of features which can be obtained

Benefits of Vector Data

• Vector data is a compact way of storing data, typically requiring 1/10th of the space of a raster with similar information

Benefits of Vector Data

• Projection of vectors from one coordinate system to another is faster than rasters

Benefits of Vector Data

• Vector model is ideally suited to certain types of analysis problems, such as– determining perimeters and area– detecting adjacency of features, and – modeling flow through networks

Drawbacks of Vector Data

• Vector data is poorly adapted to storing continuously varying surfaces like elevation or precipitation

Drawbacks of Vector Data

• It is difficult to calculate information from contours such as slope, flow direction, and aspect with vector data

Drawbacks of Vector Data

• Some types of analysis take longer to perform with vectors

Benefits of Raster Data

• Raster data is ideal for storing continuously and rapidly changing discontinuous information because each cell can have a value completely different from its neighbors

Benefits of Raster Data

• Many analyses are simple and fast to perform and an extensive set of analysis tools for rasters far outstrips those available for vectors

Benefits of Raster Data

• Raster data has access to an analysis method called map algebra, in which maps can be used as apart of algebraic expressions

Drawbacks of Raster Data

• Raster data suffer from trade-offs between precision and storage space to a greater extent than vectors do

• If rasters are very precise they need to take up a large amount of storage space.

Drawbacks of Raster Data

• Raster data has a poor ability to store attributes

• Raster file is an array of cells with numeric values and each cell has only one value

• To store both geology and infiltration values for an area requires storing two separate rasters

GO PLAY

Practice these vocabulary with Purpose Games “Price Ch1 V vs R” found here: http://www.purposegames.com/game/95fbfac383/info

SOURCE

All this vocabulary comes from:• Price, Maribeth. Mastering ArcGIS.

McGraw-Hill; 3 edition. 2007.