A TENSOR BASED FRAMEWORK FOR LARGE SCALE SPATIO-TEMPORAL RASTER DATA PROCESSING

Abstract. In this paper, we address the curse of dimensionality and scalability issues while managing vast volumes of multidimensional raster data in the renewable energy modeling process in an appropriate spatial and temporal context. Tensor representation provides a convenient way to capture inter-dependencies along multiple dimensions. In this direction, we propose a sophisticated way of handling large-scale multi-layered spatio-temporal data, adopted for raster-based geographic information systems (GIS). We chose Tensorflow, an open source software library developed by Google using data flow graphs, and the tensor data structure. We provide a comprehensive performance evaluation of the proposed model against r.sun in GRASS GIS. Benchmarking shows that the tensor-based approach outperforms by up to 60%, concerning overall execution time for high-resolution datasets and fine-grained time intervals for daily sums of solar irradiation [Wh.m-2.day-1].