faa-dof-gp

Written by Jeff Jacobson for Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) GIS & Roadway Data Office.

License

• remotezip.py is based on code posted on StackOverflow by João Pinto. This code is licensed under the CC BY-SA 3.0 License.
• All other code is public domain (Unlicense).

Summary

This library provides the ability to read the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Terrain and Obstacles Data (TOD) Team - Digital Obstacle File (DOF) files.

Dependencies

• ArcGIS Desktop must be installed on computer. (Having just ArcGIS Server instead of ArcGIS Desktop may also work, but has not been tested.)
• ArcView license level should be sufficient.

Modules

faadof.py

Provides utilities for importing FAA DOF data into a geodatabase.

remotezip.py

Reads remote ZIP files using HTTP range requests. This allows a file contained in a remote ZIP archive to be downloaded and extracted without the need to download the entire ZIP archive. Code posted on StackOverflow by João Pinto. This code is licensed under the CC BY-SA 3.0 License.

Use

Getting the Python scripts onto your computer

If you are reading these instructions on GitHub then the first thing you will need to do is copy the files to your computer. You can download and extract a zip archive (or if you know how to use git you can use git clone).

Running the script

Run Scripts/faadof.py. This will download the obstacle data for Washington state from the FAA website and copy it into a file geodatabase. You can provide an optional parameter to specify the path to the output file geodatabase. If this parameter is omitted the output path will default to ../FaaObstruction.gdb.

faadof.py "c:\example\FAADOF.gdb"

If you run the script again, the script will check the FAA website to see if there is any data newer than what is in the existing file geodatabase. If updates are detected then the file geodatabase will be updated with the latest data.

Using as a Python module

You can import faadof.py as a module in your own Python script if you need to use data other than that of WA.

import sys, os, faadof

# Get the parameter for the output GDB.
if len(sys.argv) > 1:
	gdbPath = os.path.abspath(sys.argv[1])
else:
	gdbPath = os.path.abspath("../FaaObstruction.gdb")

currencyDate = None
if arcpy.Exists(gdbPath):
	# Get the currency date
	currencyDate = faadof.getCurrencyDate(gdbPath)
	
print "Downloading DOFs..."
dofFilePaths = faadof.downloadDofs(datafiles=('56-WY.DAT'),lastCurrencyDate=currencyDate);

if dofFilePaths is not None:
	
	print "Creating new geodatabase: %s..." % gdbPath
	faadof.createDofGdb(gdbPath)
	
	print "Importing data..."
	faadof.readDofsIntoGdb(gdbPath, dofFilePaths)

print "Finished"