GDAL-RASTER-ROUGHNESS(1)

💅 gdal-raster-roughness — Generate a roughness map 🏔️

okay bestie, sit down, hydrate, because we're about to talk about gdal-raster-roughness, a lil' icon from the GDAL manual. ✨

Added in version 3.11. 🎀 (yes she's new, yes she's serving)

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✨ NAME ✨

gdal-raster-roughness — generate a roughness map. that's the whole job. she does one thing and she ate. 💅

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

Usage: gdal raster roughness [OPTIONS] <INPUT> <OUTPUT>

Generate a roughness map.

Positional arguments:

• -i, --input <INPUT> — Input raster datasets [required] [not available in pipelines]
• -o, --output <OUTPUT> — Output raster dataset [required] [not available in pipelines]

Common Options:

• -h, --help — Display help message and exit
• --json-usage — Display usage as JSON document and exit
• --config <KEY>=<VALUE> — Configuration option [may be repeated]
• -q, --quiet — Quiet mode (no progress bar or warning message) [not available in pipelines]

Options:

• -f, --of, --format, --output-format <OUTPUT-FORMAT> — Output format ("GDALG" allowed) [not available in pipelines]
• --co, --creation-option <KEY>=<VALUE> — Creation option [may be repeated] [not available in pipelines]
• --overwrite — Whether overwriting existing output dataset is allowed [not available in pipelines] — Mutually exclusive with --append
• --append — Append as a subdataset to existing output [not available in pipelines] — Mutually exclusive with --overwrite
• -b, --band <BAND> — Input band (1-based index) (default: 1)
• --no-edges — Do not try to interpolate values at dataset edges or close to nodata values

Advanced Options:

• --if, --input-format <INPUT-FORMAT> — Input formats [may be repeated] [not available in pipelines]
• --oo, --open-option <KEY>=<VALUE> — Open options [may be repeated] [not available in pipelines]

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🌈 DESCRIPTION 🌈

okay so gdal raster roughness generates a single-band raster with values computed from the elevation. no cap. 🏔️

and what even is roughness, you ask? bestie. Roughness is the largest inter-cell difference of a central pixel and its surrounding cell, as defined in Wilson et al. (2007, Marine Geodesy 30:3-35). like, she's academic, she cites her sources. 📚✨

This subcommand is also available as a potential step of gdal raster pipeline. (slay, she's flexible 💅)

The roughness value -9999 is used as the nodata value. periodt.

A nodata value in the target dataset will also be emitted if at least one pixel set to the nodata value is found in the 3x3 window centered around each source pixel. By default, the algorithm will compute values at image edges or if a nodata value is found in the 3x3 window, by interpolating missing values — unless --no-edges is specified, in which case a 1-pixel border around the image will be set with the nodata value. 🙈

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🎀 GDALG OUTPUT (ON-THE-FLY / STREAMED DATASET) 🎀

This program supports serializing the command line as a JSON file using the GDALG output format. 🫶

The resulting file can then be opened as a raster dataset using the GDALG: GDAL Streamed Algorithm driver, and apply the specified pipeline in a on-the-fly / streamed way. ✨ literally streaming, main character energy.

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💖 PROGRAM-SPECIFIC OPTIONS 💖

• -b, --band <BAND> — Index (starting at 1) of the band to which the roughness must be computed. 👑
• --no-edges — Do not try to interpolate values at dataset edges or close to nodata values. 🌸 (she said "no interpolation, we're raw-dogging the edges" — well, sort of)

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⭐ STANDARD OPTIONS ⭐

• --append — Append input raster as a new subdataset to an existing output file. Only works with drivers that support adding subdatasets such as GTiff -- GeoTIFF File Format and GPKG -- GeoPackage raster. This also creates the output dataset if it does not exist yet. 🫶
• --co, --creation-option <NAME>=<VALUE> — Many formats have one or more optional creation options that can be used to control particulars about the file created. For instance, the GeoTIFF driver supports creation options to control compression, and whether the file should be tiled. 🧚

May be repeated.

The creation options available vary by format driver, and some simple formats have no creation options at all. A list of options supported for a format can be listed with the --formats command line option but the documentation for the format is the definitive source of information on driver creation options. See Raster drivers format specific documentation for legal creation options for each format.

• --if, --input-format <format> — Format/driver name to be attempted to open the input file(s). It is generally not necessary to specify it, but it can be used to skip automatic driver detection, when it fails to select the appropriate driver. This option can be repeated several times to specify several candidate drivers. Note that it does not force those drivers to open the dataset. In particular, some drivers have requirements on file extensions. 💀

May be repeated.

• --oo, --open-option <NAME>=<VALUE> — Dataset open option (format specific). 🍓

May be repeated.

• -f, --of, --format, --output-format <OUTPUT-FORMAT> — Which output raster format to use. Allowed values may be given by gdal --formats | grep raster | grep rw | sort. 🔥
• --overwrite — Allow program to overwrite existing target file or dataset. Otherwise, by default, gdal errors out if the target file or dataset already exists. ⚠️ (she's not shy, she'll just delete it, so be sure bestie)

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💜 RETURN STATUS CODE 💜

The program returns status code 0 in case of success, and non-zero in case of error (non-blocking errors emitted as warnings are considered as a successful execution). 🫡

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🔥 EXAMPLES 🔥

Example 1: Generates a roughness map from a DTED0 file. 🗺️

$ gdal raster roughness n43.dt0 out.tif --overwrite

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

Even Rouault <even.rouault@spatialys.com> 🫶 thank you king

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🌈 COPYRIGHT 🌈

1998-2026 ✨

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and that's the whole page, bestie. this was the GDAL-RASTER-ROUGHNESS(1) manual page, straight from the GDAL source, dated Aug 18, 2026. go make some roughness maps, you absolute icon. 💅🎀🦋 ngl she's a little niche but she's iconic. periodt. 💖