readme

Create Georeferencing information for Instrument Approach Procedures and Airport Diagrams

Note: The FAA is currently adding georeferencing information to the Instrument
Approach Procedure plates, so this program is no longer necessary for them

However, they have yet to release georeferenced Aiport Diagrams so it can still 
be useful

These instructions are based on using Ubuntu

How to get this utility up and running:

	Enable the "universe" repository in "Software & Updates" section of System Settings and update

	Install git
		sudo apt-get install git

	Download the repository
		git clone https://github.com/jlmcgraw/GeoReferencePlates

	Execute the setup.sh shell script
		./setup.sh

	Download some Instrument Approach Procedure plates
		- Download these with the "load_dtpp_metadata.pl" file
			This will also re-initialize the dtpp.db file, be careful

		- A download of all plates takes several hours		
	
	Requires a database containing lat/lon info 
		(currently included in the git repository)

	Requires a database containing charting cycle information
		(currently included in the git repository as dtpp.db.zip, unzip to use)

	Requires perl version > 5.010

How to use these utilities
	Usage: ./georeferencePlatesViaDb.pl <options> <directory_with_PDFs>
		-v debug
		-a<FAA airport ID>  To specify an airport ID
		-i<2 Letter state ID>  To specify a specific state
		-p Output a marked up version of PDF
		-s Output statistics about the PDF
		-c Don't overwrite existing .vrt
		-o Re-create outlines/mask files
		-b Allow creation of vrt with known bad lon/lat ratio
		-m Allow use of non-unique obstacles

	Usage: ./georeferenceAirportDiagramsViaDb.pl <options> <directory_with_PDFs>
		-v debug
		-a<FAA airport ID>  To specify an airport ID
		-i<2 Letter state ID>  To specify a specific state
		-p Output a marked up version of PDF
		-s Output statistics  to dtpp.db about the PDF
		-c Don't overwrite existing .vrt

	-p will create two extra files:
		 marked-*.pdf
			Shows how the ground control points were matched
			A green circle indicates which were used 

		 gcp-*.png
			Uses lon/lat information from the database to draw the ground control points.  If the red dots don't seem to match up with a feature (obstacle, fix, nav aid) the georeference probably wasn't accurate
			The green dot is the airport lon/lat

	The first time the utility is run for a particular PDF it will take longer as it is generating the corresponding PNG and mask files.  These will not be created again if they exist

	A first run for all plates may take a day or two, subsequent runs will be much shorter

	./chartCounts.pl
		Produce a count of the plates from the dtpp.db database

This software and the data it produces come with no guarantees about accuracy or usefulness whatsoever!  Don't use it when your life may be on the line!

Thanks for trying this out!  If you have any feedback, ideas or patches please submit them to github.

-Jesse McGraw
jlmcgraw@gmail.com