https://media.ccc.de/v/bucharest109...



Most real world features can be presented as vector or raster layers. In open source world, GDAL provides a comprehensive set of tools to interact with such datasets. But vector or raster is not always a suitable description of real world features. Data from oceanography, metrology, hydrology, etc often have multiple components at each location on an irregular structured mesh.

A *mesh* can a collection of vertices, edges and faces in 2D or 3D space:
vertices XY(Z) points (in the layer's coordinate reference system)
edges connect pairs of vertices
faces sets of edges forming a closed shape typically triangles or quadrilaterals (quads), rarely polygons with higher number of vertices


Mesh gives us information about the spatial structure. In addition to the mesh we have *datasets* that assign a value to every vertex. For example, ice cap thickness at particular moment of time. A single file may contain multiple datasets typically multiple quantities (e.g. water depth, water flow) that may be varying in time.

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Lutra Consulting Peter Petrik

https://talks.2019.foss4g.org/buchare...