How to convert data for Geogrid
Running WRF-Fire using real data requires additional datasets not included in the standard WPS input data tarball. For these, it is necessary to convert your source data into the geogrid data format. The geogrid data format consists of a directory of tiled binary files with names indicating the index range contained in each tile. For instance, a file name of 00101-00200.00051-00100 would consist of columns 101 through 200 and rows 51 through 100. The files themselves contain only an array integers, with no associated metadata. The metadata for the dataset is contained in a file called index, which contains a series keyword=value statements telling geogrid the details of the data tiles, such as width, height, the number of bytes per integer, etc. The index file also contains metadata for the data set itself, such as the projection information and physical units.
We have made available a series of scripts and utilities (autoWPS) intended to automate many of the steps required to create a dataset for a WRF real run. A utility program included in this repository, WPSGeoTiff, is a simple command line utility that takes a GeoTiff file and writes converts the data into geogrid binary format. The GeoTiff format was chosen because it is a highly ubiquitous format for geotagged data and it has a cross-platform and open source c library called libGeoTIFF. Most, if not all, GIS application software is capable of converting or exporting a dataset as a GeoTiff file.
Prerequisites
The WPSGeoTiff utility requires two external libraries in order to compile. You should pick a location to install the libraries, for instance ${HOME}/opt.
Both are written in c, and include standard GNU auto-configuration scripts.
Obtaining the WPSGeoTiff source
The autoWPS package is available as a git repository hosted at github. The repository can be cloned with the git command:
git clone git://github.com/jbeezley/autoWPS.git
A tarball of the latest release can also be obtained at http://github.com/jbeezley/autoWPS/tarball/master.
Compiling WPSGeoTiff
Inside the main directory of the autoWPS release is a subdirectory called WPSGeoTiff.