Chapter 2 — Data Formats

2.1 Vector Data File

a) GeoJSON

An example of a FeatureCollection that includes a point, line and polygon geometry with some attributes stored as properties:

  { "type": "FeatureCollection",
    "features": [
      { "type": "Feature",
        "geometry": {"type": "Point", "coordinates": [102.0, 0.5]},
        "properties": {"prop0": "value0"}
        },
      { "type": "Feature",
        "geometry": {
          "type": "LineString",
          "coordinates": [
            [102.0, 0.0], [103.0, 1.0], [104.0, 0.0], [105.0, 1.0]
            ]
          },
        "properties": {
          "prop0": "value0",
          "prop1": 0.0
          }
        },
      { "type": "Feature",
         "geometry": {
           "type": "Polygon",
           "coordinates": [
             [ [100.0, 0.0], [101.0, 0.0], [101.0, 1.0],
               [100.0, 1.0], [100.0, 0.0] ]
             ]
         },
         "properties": {
           "prop0": "value0",
           "prop1": {"this": "that"}
           }
         }
       ]
     }

b) GeoPackage

Its filename usually ends in .gpkg. Applications such as QGIS, R and ArcGIS will recognize this format.

c) Shapefile

The shapefile format is a geospatial vector data format for geographic information system (GIS) software.

The list of files that define a “shapefile” is shown in the following table. Note that each file has a specific…