I don't think there is a GIS that does this in a natural way - all you can do is read in multiple slices. If the order of your axes really is time, x, y, z then you will have y.n * z.n (time, x) slices (as bands) when read by GDAL - NetCDF will tend to store dimensions in reverse order to the natural one, and I think GDAL reverses that - but you can tell by the dimension and number of your bands, and the named metadata on the GDAL bands.
Later versions of ArcGIS allow time-sliced arrays I think, so you could store several of these. NetCDF cannot store multi-attribute arrays (it will store several same-size, same-metadata arrays for that purpose), so one thing you could do is allow the GIS to to store several multi-band arrays (an array for each T, a band for each Z) - but you need to wear the inconsistency of mixing attributes with dimensions. Manifold reads in multiple rasters and I presume ArcGIS does too. Eonfusion will do its best to read the array in its natural state, but it is interpreted through GDAL and the dimensions reconstructed from the band metadata, but it's not a traditional GIS in any sense. R can read NetCDF natively or with GDAL (RNetCDF, ncdf, rgdal packages) and convert to the Spatial classes, but these are limited to multi-band 2D arrays. Cheers, Mike. On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 5:15 AM, Christopher Barker <chris.bar...@noaa.gov> wrote: > Hi folks, > > I have a dataset that is a 4-dimensional array of values: time,x,y,z > > We're currently using netcdf to store it, which is well suited to this kind > of data. > > However, we also need to get it into a GIS (Arc in this case), and I'm > trying to find a good way to do that. > > Both Arc and gdalinfo do strange things if I simply point them at the netcdf > file. GDAL seems to (arbitrarily?) see it as a 9064 band data set, so it is > taking particular slice (I think I'm getting a bunch of (time, z) 2-d bands. > > Anyway, I suspect that if I re-arrange the axis in the netcdf file, I might > get something more reasonable, but my question is: > > What is a good format to ex[press this to a GIS system? > > I'm imaging multiple files, maybe geo-tiff, but how to I express time and > elevation in a way that is natural to GIS? > > thanks for your thoughts, > > -Chris > > > -- > Christopher Barker, Ph.D. > Oceanographer > > Emergency Response Division > NOAA/NOS/OR&R (206) 526-6959 voice > 7600 Sand Point Way NE (206) 526-6329 fax > Seattle, WA 98115 (206) 526-6317 main reception > > chris.bar...@noaa.gov > _______________________________________________ > gdal-dev mailing list > gdal-dev@lists.osgeo.org > http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/gdal-dev > _______________________________________________ gdal-dev mailing list gdal-dev@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/gdal-dev