Results output

A RiskScape model will always produce some results output whenever it is run. When you run a model, you can customize:

  • Where the results are saved.

  • What file format the results are saved in.

The basics

Default behaviour

The default file format that RiskScape will save your model results in is:

  • Shapefile, if your results contain geospatial data (i.e. geometry)

  • CSV for results that do not contain any geometry.

By default, RiskScape will save your model results to a timestamped sub-directory within the current working directory where you ran the RiskScape command. This sub-directory will have the path:

.\output\MODEL_NAME\TIMESTAMP\

Where MODEL_NAME is the name of your model (e.g. simple-exposure), and TIMESTAMP is the time when the model was run (e.g. 2022-07-11T15_23_31).

Tip

If you want the results output to always go to a specific location, other than the current working directory, then you can specify a Project output base location in your project.ini directory.

Changing the file format

Instead of defaulting to shapefile, you can change the file format your results are saved in by adding the --format CLI option to your riskscape model run command.

Refer to riskscape format list for a list of supported output file formats.

Alternatively, you can setup your model to always save results in a specific file format. For example, the report-event-impact.format parameter in a wizard model will set the file format for the event-impact results. If your model configuration already has a file format set, then the --format CLI option will have no effect.

Tip

Refer to the Getting started modelling in RiskScape tutorial for examples of changing the default file format or output location on the command-line.

Changing the output location

To save your model results in a different directory location, simply specify the desired output location in your riskscape model run command using the --output CLI option.

Note

If the output location already exists, RiskScape will not overwrite your results by default. Instead, RiskScape will append a number to the filename to ensure it is unique, e.g. event-impact-1.csv, event-impact-2.csv, and so on. To always overwrite any existing results files, simply use the --replace CLI option with your riskscape model run command.

Specifying an --output location will always take precedence over the Project output base location setting.

Supplementary output data

Whenever a model is run, RiskScape also saves supplementary data to the output location. This supplementary data describes exactly how the model was run, for reproducibility purposes.

The supplementary data includes:

  • manifest - records basic details, such as the RiskScape version used and the outputs produced

  • pipeline - the actual pipeline code that was executed

  • stats - counters and timing statistics for the model run. For more on what these statistics mean, refer to Progress statistics.

Tip

If you add --checksum to your riskscape model run command, then you can use the riskscape model verify command later to check that the results files have not been inadvertently altered in any way.

By default, the supplementary outputs will be saved as separate .txt files within the output directory.

Other output locations

In addition to saving the model results to a directory on your computer, RiskScape also supports:

  • Saving the results to a PostGIS database.

  • Combining multiple result layers from the same model into a single GeoPackage output file.

Note

PostGIS and GeoPackage outputs require the Beta plugin to be enabled.

These output locations can be specified either by the --output CLI option or the Project output base location.

Tip

We use --output here rather than --format because we are changing the behaviour of how all the output data is written. This includes the supplementary data RiskScape generates about the model.

PostGIS output

A PostGIS output location can be specified in the format postgis://USER@DB_HOST[:PORT]/DATABASE. RiskScape will then save your results directly to the database.

If the model would normally produce multiple output files, then the results for each output file will be saved to it’s own table instead.

Refer to PostGIS location format for how to use a PostGIS location.

GeoPackage output

A GeoPackage output location can be specified in the format PATH\TO\RESULTS.gpkg.

If the model would normally produce multiple output files, then the results for each output file will be saved to it’s own layer instead, within a single overall GeoPackage file.

Supplementary output data

RiskScape will always save the supplementary output data (i.e. manifest, pipeline, stats) even when the output location is a PostGIS database or combined GeoPackage file. In these cases, the supplementary data is added to a table called riskscape_manifest.

Note

GeoPackage and PostGIS outputs will always add an entry to the riskscape_manifest table, even when the --replace argument is used. This can mean that older manifest entries may refer to tables or layers that have already been replaced by later model runs.

Caution

When you upgrade RiskScape to a later version, the format of the riskscape_manifest table may change. If this occurs, then you will need to manually remove or rename the existing riskscape_manifest table, before any new manifest entries can be written.