What transformations can TerraPop perform?
Attaching contextual variables to microdata - Contextual variables pertain to the geographic unit in which a person or household is located. They are attached to each person record based on the geographic variables for the person. All persons in a given geographic unit will have the same value for any given contextual variable. Contextual variables can be drawn from area-level data (e.g. % unemployment in a district) or derived from raster data (e.g. % of district area with tree cover).
Raster to area-level - TerraPop can derive area-level data from raster data by summarizing the values of the raster cells that fall within each geographic unit. Available summary operations depend on the type of raster data. For continuous raster variables (e.g., temperature, precipitation), available operations are minimum, maximum, and mean. For categorical variables (e.g., land cover classifications), available operations are mode and number of classes. For variables related to particular land cover/land use categories, like cropland, available operations are % area and total area.
Area-level to raster - TerraPop can transform area-level data into raster data by distributing data about geographic units over the grid cells within each unit.