Release Changelog

v1.2.0

Built 29 July 2022

Breaking

  • Duplicate bookmark settings now show an error, rather than being silently ignored. Previously, the last defined setting was used, and any earlier values were ignored. This change brings bookmarks in to line line with other project configuration, such as model definitions where duplicates are not expected. You can fix this error by simply removing any surplus settings and leaving only the one your project needs (usually this is the last one). (GL769)

  • Previously, when RiskScape read an HDF5 dataset that contained a simple type (e.g. integer or floating values), it produced a relation containing a single attributed called value. Now, the name of the attribute will match the name of the dataset instead. For example, reading the /gmf_data/gmv_0 dataset will now produce a relation containing a gmv_0 attribute, instead of a value attribute. (GL718)

  • The --no-progress-indicator CLI option has been removed for the riskscape model run, riskscape model batch, and riskscape pipeline eval commands. Instead, this has been replaced with a new --progress-indicator=none option.

Enhancements

  • Loading plugins in the settings file has been simplified. E.g you can now load the beta plugin with a settings.ini containing: load-plugin = beta. (GL757)

  • The RiskScape expression language now supports floating point numbers in scientific notation, e.g 5.27e-10. (GL754)

  • RiskScape now supports GeoPackage as an output (e.g --output results.gpkg). This will save all result layers to the same output GeoPackage file, rather than separate files when using the --format geopackage option. (GL758)

  • Manifest information is now saved when writing output to GeoPackage and PostGIS outputs. (GL759)

  • RiskScape has been updated to support the v1.12.2 HDF5 library. Linux users may need to change their settings.ini‘s [hdf5] lib_path to point to /opt/hdf5-1.12.2/lib/libhdf5_java.so (GL760)

  • HDF5 bookmarks can now read multiple datasets at once and combine them into a single relation. This is only supported when the datasets all contain the exact same number of elements. (GL718)

  • Coverage bookmarks now accept a map-value parameter that lets you manipulate the value that gets returned when the coverage is sampled. For example, you could convert a hazard intensity measure from centimetres to metres by using map-value = value / 100. A new map_coverage() function has also been added, which lets you do the same thing directly from pipeline code. (GL782)

  • The round() function now lets you specify the number of decimal places to round to. (GL452)

  • New norm_ppf and lognorm_ppf functions have been added to return the Percent Point Function (inverse Cumulative Distribution Function) from a normal or log-normal curve. (GL744)

  • For USGS ShakeMaps, you can now specify a specific dataset to read. Previously RiskScape would only read the PGA data. Refer to USGS ShakeMaps for more details. (GL744)

  • Running a model with unknown parameters will now produce a warning. Unknown parameters are likely to be caused by mistyping the parameter name. (GL768)

  • The progress statistics, displayed on the terminal when a model runs, have been improved. They now include a percentage complete metric for some pipeline steps. For long-running models, the percentage complete for the exposure-layer (e.g. exposures_input.complete) can often be used as a guide to the overall progress of the model. Refer to Progress statistics for more details. (GL792)

  • Commands that support progress statistics now support a --progress-indicator CLI option. Instead of displaying the progress statistics on the CLI, you can specify a file that progress updates will be written to, e.g. --progress-indicator=output/progress.txt. This may be useful when running RiskScape as part of a script. (GL792)

  • More improvements have been made to the RiskScape documentation. Of note are:

Fixes

  • When RiskScape accessed files over HTTP, some websites could mistake RiskScape for a bot and reject the HTTP request with a 403 error. RiskScape now sets the ‘User-Agent’ in HTTP requests to avoid this problem (GL751).

  • Various issues with using WFS input data have now been resolved, including:

    • Connection errors now show the cause of the connection error. Previously these were obscured by an unhelpful Failed to create data store error. (GL461)

    • Previously RiskScape was only loading the first 100,000 features/records for a WFS layer and was ignoring any subsequent data. (GL753)

    • If the WFS server had a configuration setting (e.g. maxRecordCount) that limited how many features are returned in each WFS request, then RiskScape would only load that many features. The number of features per WFS request can now also be lowered using the wfs-page-size bookmark parameter. (GL761)

    • Trying to use a WFS layer that contained a large number of records (e.g. 500,000) could result in RiskScape exiting with an error, generally due to a connection timeout. (GL573)

    • Depending on the WFS server, RiskScape could exit with an exception trying to read the WFS data. (GL573) When the --show-stack-trace CLI option was used, the following error would be displayed in this case:

      java.lang.ClassCastException: java.util.HashMap cannot be cast to org.opengis.feature.simple.SimpleFeature

    • Some examples on how to use WFS input data have now been added to the RiskScape documentation. Refer to the new WFS data page.

  • Previously RiskScape could exit with an exception when the --show-project-errors CLI option was used, and the project contained a bookmark with an error. This has now been fixed. (GL764)

  • When input data was read in GeoJSON format, floating-point values could sometimes be truncated and turned into whole numbers. For example, the value 20.5 would be turned into 20.0. This would only occur if the same attribute in the input data contained a mixture of integer (i.e. whole number) and floating-point values. When this mixture of integer and floating-point values were present in the input data, RiskScape could also exit with an exception:

    IllegalStateException: Found conflicting types Double and Long for property XYZ

    These issues have now been fixed. (GL788)

  • For advanced users that write their own pipelines, RiskScape could sometimes complain about a pipeline cycle error when there was no cycle. The pipeline cycle checking has now been improved. (GL772)

  • Various minor improvements have been made to error handling, for example how errors and exceptions are displayed, particularly when the --show-stacktrace CLI option is used. (GL803)

v1.1.0

Built 5 May 2022

Enhancements

  • An optional Beta plugin has been added to make new/experimental features available. The beta plugin is not enabled by default, and any beta plugin features may still change significantly in future releases of RiskScape. (GL716)

  • Preliminary support has been added to the beta plugin for:

    • Saving results to a PostGIS database. (GL705)

    • Reading and writing vector data in the GeoPackage (.gpkg) file format (GL706, GL728)

  • New functions have been added to the beta plugin, including:

    • list_to_tuple, which makes it easier to save the contents of a list to CSV or shapefile. Each item in the list will be written as a separate column or attribute. (GL719)

    • switch, which is useful when you have a range of possible input values that you want to map to a smaller subset of values. E.g. you want to map any of the value codes 0, 12, 44, 22 to simply 'Timber'.

  • Using raster data as your exposure-layer now results in polygon geometries that cover the extent of each raster point. Previously the geometry produced was a point rather than a polygon. (GL620)

  • Type expressions can now use hyphens in struct attribute names as well as quoted identifiers, e.g struct(value_0-100: integer, "Total Cost": floating) (GL686)

  • More tutorials have been added to the RiskScape documentation, including an ‘Intermediate Concepts’ section that covers:

    • How the various RiskScape spatial sampling and consequence analysis techniques work. (GL649)

    • Improved CPython setup instructions and an example damage state function.

    • How the riskscape model batch lets you run a model repeatedly by varying the hazard-layer. (GL168)

    • How the various RiskScape geoprocessing features operate. (GL722)

  • A new riskscape bookmark evaluate command has been added. This lets you visualize the input data, typically in shapefile form, after it has been manipulated by any RiskScape bookmark settings. This is useful to check the CRS axis-order is correct when you need to construct geometry manually, such as from CSV input data. (GL608)

Fixes

  • Table rendering on Windows has been improved for info commands. Previously, commands such as riskscape format info shapefile, could result in poor rendering if the content being displayed contained line-breaks. (GL703)

  • The default validate-geometry setting is error, which means RiskScape detects and automatically fixes any invalid geometry in the input data. However, the default validate-geometry project setting was not being applied correctly when geometry was reprojected. This meant that geometry could become invalid as a result of reprojection and RiskScape would not detect or fix it (unless validate-geometry = error was explicitly set in the project.ini file). This issue has now been fixed. (GL724)

  • When setting up CPython support in RiskScape, you no longer need double backslashes in the python3-bin file path in settings.ini. For example, you can now use C:\Users\Ronnie\Anaconda3\python.exe instead of C:\\Users\\Ronnie\\Anaconda3\\python.exe. Existing settings.ini files that contain double backslashes for the Python path should still continue to work fine. Previously, exceptions or other errors could occur when single backslashes were used, but this has now been fixed. (GL-735)

  • Setting the output-base-location in the project would result in an extra output directory appearing in the output path. This has been fixed now. (GL743)

  • Running RiskScape without a project.ini or home directory would result in unusual errors if a relative file was accessed, e.g riskscape bookmark info FILE.csv. This has now been fixed. (GL710)

  • Spatial sampling has been improved for the sample_one() function, which is used by CLOSEST sampling in the wizard. For complex line and polygon geometry, such as shapes that look like a ‘C’ or multi-polygons, the geometric centroid of the shape can fall outside the shape itself. Previously, RiskScape would always attempt to use the geometric centroid first when sampling the hazard value, even if this centroid fell outside the shape itself. Now sample_one will always ensure that the sampled value falls inside the input geometry. (GL737)

  • When CPython functions were enabled on your system, sometimes the riskscape model run command could exit with a java.lang.NullPointerException error. This only occurred if the shapefile input data for the exposure-layer contained NULL values. This issue has now been fixed. (GL-739)

  • When all-intersections sampling is used, the wizard will now produce a single value for the exposed_ratio attribute. Previously exposed_ratio was a List type, which made it harder to use. (GL741)

  • Model run --parameter values may now contain white space around the equals sign. E.g --parameter "input-exposures.layer = Roads_SE_Upolu". (GL741)

v1.0.0

Built 4 February 2022

Version 1.0.0 is the first official public release of RiskScape.

If you have been using older, evaluation versions of RiskScape, you can view a record of the changes in functionality between releases here.