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Hole Center NoData Raster

rasterGeoTIFFtinybundled

A raster whose valid pixels ring a central NoData void. Footprint extraction that ignores NoData returns a solid polygon covering the hole.

Pixels of hole_center_nodata, a 12x12 raster, with NoData in magenta
12x12 px. Rendered from the case's actual pixels, contrast-stretched for display; NoData is shown in magenta.
Property Value
Case ID hole_center_nodata
Category raster
Format GeoTIFF
Location Southern Italy / Sicily (synthetic, UTM 33N) — 13.85°E, 38.84°N → 13.85°E, 38.84°N
Test tier unit
Size class tiny
Storage class bundled
Redistributable yes
Loader rasterio
Status validated

Use this case

import pytest


@pytest.mark.geocase_case("hole_center_nodata")
def test_hole_center_nodata(geocase_case) -> None:
    data = geocase_case.load()
    assert data is not None

Use GeoCase in your tests

Install the complete set of vector, raster, and NetCDF dependencies:

pip install "geocase[all]"

View GeoCase on PyPI.

What this case checks

Ensure footprint generation handles interior NoData correctly and stays close to expected output geometry.

Risk types covered

Expected behavior

Assertion Expected
expect_loadable yes
expect_crs yes
expect_nodata yes
expected_shape [12, 12]

Known answer

Computed from the actual bytes and gated against them. Grade your own output against these.

Quantity Value
Mean over valid pixels 100.0
Mean including NoData -1022.1111111111
NoData pixels 16
Bounds (case CRS) [400000.0, 4299640.0, 400360.0, 4300000.0]

Notes

Bundled raster fixtures used to stress-test GDAL footprint generation.

Files

  • all_valid_rectangular.tif: Full-valid rectangular tile (baseline).
  • hole_center_nodata.tif: Valid pixels form a donut-like shape around an interior NoData void (a 4x4 block at the centre of a 12x12 scene). The outer border is deliberately valid, which is what makes footprint extraction that ignores NoData visibly wrong: it returns the solid rectangle instead of a ring.
  • rotated_two_islands.tif: Rotated/skewed transform with disconnected valid islands.
  • nonsquare_diagonal_sparse.tif: Non-square pixel transform with sparse diagonal valid cells.
  • thin_corridor_shape.tif: Narrow corridor geometry sensitive to simplification/shape artifacts.

Intent

These scenes are intentionally small but geometrically tricky, so footprint code can be validated against edge conditions without requiring external datasets.

Two kinds of footprint fixture

Each raster ships a footprint sidecar, and until Plan 32 they did not all mean the same thing while all being named as if they did. They are now split by filename, because the name is what a reader trusts:

  • <case>_footprint_truth.geojson — ground truth. Derived from the raster's own valid-pixel mask by scripts/generate_raster_fixtures.py, from the same array that writes the GeoTIFF, so it cannot drift by construction. This is what params.expected_footprint points at, and what the content gate (scripts/validate_case_content.py) checks against on part count, area and hole count.
  • <case>_footprint_gdal_hull.geojson — a recording of one consumer's answer. These are the files originally committed here, produced by the GDAL footprint utility, which returns a simplified/hull-like polygon rather than the mask. Kept, not deleted, so a future change in GDAL's behaviour is still detectable; pointed at by params.recorded_gdal_footprint.

all_valid_rectangular has no _gdal_hull file: every pixel is valid, so the hull is the mask and the second file would be byte-identical.

How far apart the two are

Case GDAL hull Mask-exact truth Inflation
all_valid_rectangular Polygon 129600.0 Polygon 129600.0 1.000
hole_center_nodata Polygon 115200.0 Polygon 115200.0 (1 hole) 1.000
rotated_two_islands Polygon 15562.5 MultiPolygon 7875.0 1.976×
nonsquare_diagonal_sparse Polygon 27000.0 MultiPolygon 14400.0 1.875×
thin_corridor_shape Polygon 38437.5 Polygon 13750.0 2.795×

For rotated_two_islands and nonsquare_diagonal_sparse the hull is not merely larger — it merges regions that are genuinely disjoint. A consumer validating "does my footprint code keep disjoint regions disjoint?" against the hull would be told that merging them is correct.

examples/test_gdal_footprint.py asserts both halves: GDAL still reproduces its own recording exactly, and GDAL's answer strictly covers and exceeds the truth for those three, with the parts merged. Before Plan 32 it compared GDAL only to the hull at max_diff_ratio=1e-10 — a regression check on GDAL against itself, which could not fail for the reason these cases exist.

min_rect_ratio

The thresholds in each case.yaml describe genuinely non-rectangular shapes and were re-derived from the truth geometry in Plan 32. The previous values (0.74 / 0.93 / 0.76 / 0.98) had been fitted to the hulls, which are near-rectangular by construction, so they asserted almost nothing; the truth ratios are 0.375 / 0.500 / 0.275 / 0.889.

Regeneration

Every raster here and every _footprint_truth.geojson is emitted by scripts/generate_raster_fixtures.py from a single array, so the two cannot drift apart. They previously did: the committed hole_center_nodata raster carried NoData on the 1 px outer border with a fully valid interior — the exact inverse of the description above — and its footprint had been regenerated from that drifted raster, so the two agreed with each other while contradicting the case's stated purpose. See docs/plans/28-validate-geocase.md Phase 1 and docs/plans/32-footprint-truth-and-ambiguous-zero.md Phase 1.

rotated_two_islands_warped — the answer, shipped with the question

A rotated affine has no correct north-up reading, so a consumer compared only against itself can agree with itself and still be geographically wrong. That is precisely how rio-tiler 9.4.3 failed: read(), part() and preview() returned 9, 4 and 9 valid pixels for rotated_two_islands against a WarpedVRT reference of 7 — three different answers, no error, no warning.

Every validation run to date had to hand-build that WarpedVRT before it could say which answer was right. rotated_two_islands_warped ships it: the same rotated islands as the primary, plus rotated_two_islands_warped_reference.tif, the materialized north-up warp, as a sidecar. Following the crs_mismatch_overlay_pair precedent (plan 36 §2), the defect lives in the relationship between two files — each reads cleanly on its own, and the disagreement is the finding.

The reference is derived from the primary's own bytes by scripts/generate_raster_fixtures.py, not authored, so it cannot drift away from the source it is the answer to.

This is a separate case rather than a sidecar bolted onto rotated_two_islands. That case's value is that a consumer meets a rotated affine with no reference at all; handing it one changes what it tests.

Required capabilities

  • load
  • nodata-check
  • footprint-generation

Files

Browse this case on GitHub

Source and license

  • Source: geocase-curated
  • License: MIT

Tags

edge footprint geotiff nodata raster