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I/O — Raster & Point Cloud

COG (Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFF)

Read raster tiles locally or stream windows directly from S3/HTTPS using GDAL virtual filesystems (/vsicurl/, /vsis3/).

cog

COG read operations via rasterio with /vsicurl/ and /vsis3/ support.

Supports windowed reads by bounding box with automatic CRS reprojection so users can pass EPSG:4326 bboxes against EPSG:3089 data.

read_cog(source, bbox=None, crs=None)

Read a COG, optionally windowed to a bbox.

Parameters:

Name Type Description Default
source str or Path

Local path, S3 URI, or HTTPS URL to a Cloud-Optimized GeoTIFF.

required
bbox tuple

Bounding box (xmin, ymin, xmax, ymax) for windowed read.

None
crs str

CRS of the bbox. Defaults to EPSG:4326 per project convention. If different from the source CRS, the bbox is reprojected.

None

Returns:

Type Description
tuple[ndarray, dict]

(data, profile) — raster array and rasterio profile dict.

inspect_cog(source)

Inspect a COG without reading pixel data.

Parameters:

Name Type Description Default
source str or Path

Local path, S3 URI, or HTTPS URL.

required

Returns:

Type Description
dict

Metadata dict with keys: path, width, height, crs, bounds, dtype, band_count, driver, nodata, transform.

Point Cloud (COPC / LAZ)

Optional dependency

Requires pip install abovepy[lidar] (laspy).

pointcloud

Point cloud reads for COPC/LAZ files.

Requires optional dependencies: pip install abovepy[lidar]

Supports reading point cloud data from local files, S3 URIs, and HTTPS URLs. For COPC files, spatial filtering via bbox is supported without downloading the entire file.

read_pointcloud(source, bbox=None, classifications=None)

Read a COPC or LAZ point cloud file.

Parameters:

Name Type Description Default
source str or Path

Local path, S3 URI, or HTTPS URL to a LAZ/COPC file.

required
bbox tuple

Spatial filter (xmin, ymin, xmax, ymax) in the file's native CRS.

None
classifications list[int]

Filter to specific LAS classification codes (e.g., [2] for ground).

None

Returns:

Type Description
tuple[LasData, dict]

(point_cloud, metadata) — LasData object and metadata dict.

Raises:

Type Description
ImportError

If laspy is not installed.

inspect_pointcloud(source)

Inspect a point cloud file header without reading all points.

Parameters:

Name Type Description Default
source str or Path

Local path to a LAZ/COPC file.

required

Returns:

Type Description
dict

Metadata dict.

Raises:

Type Description
ImportError

If laspy is not installed.