Apply function to points within circular neighborhood

[ahijevyc]

Apply a neighborhood filter within a circular radius r to a UxDataset or UxDataArray.

Issue #930

Overview

This is kind of like uxarray.UxDataArray.inverse_distance_weighted_remap , but the neighborhood is defined by distance, not a number of nearest neighbors. This is ideally suited for a variable resolution mesh, in which a constant of neighbors doesn't have a constant sized neighborhood. Another difference is that this neighborhood filter does not weight data by inverse distance.

Just like uxarray.UxDataArray.subset.bounding_circle this function uses ball_tree.query_radius to select grid elements in a circular neighborhood, but this function finds the neighborhood for all elements in grid, not just one center_coordinate.

The filter function func may be a user-defined function, but uses np.mean by default. It could be min, max, np.median. It can even use functions that require additional arguments, like np.percentile if you supply the argument(s) with functools.partial (see below)

Expected Usage

from functools import partial
import numpy as np
import uxarray

grid_path = "/glade/campaign/mmm/wmr/weiwang/cps/irma3/2020/tk707_conus/init.nc"
data_path = "/glade/campaign/mmm/wmr/weiwang/cps/irma3/mp6/tk707/diag.2017-09-07_09.00.00.nc"
uxds = uxarray.open_mfdataset(
    grid_path,
    data_path
)

# Trim domain
lon_bounds = (-74, -64)
lat_bounds = (18, 24)
uxda = uxds["refl10cm_max"].isel(Time=0).subset.bounding_box(lon_bounds, lat_bounds)

# this is how you use this function to smooth with 0.25-deg filter.
uxda_mean = uxda.neighborhood_filter(func=np.mean, r=0.25)


# this is another way to use this function with np.percentile
uxda_max = uxda.neighborhood_filter(func=partial(np.percentile, q=90), r=0.25)

(uxda.plot.rasterize() + uxda_mean.plot.rasterize() + uxda_max.plot.rasterize()).cols(1)

PR Checklist

General

• [x] An issue is linked created and linked
• [x] Add appropriate labels
• [x] Filled out Overview and Expected Usage (if applicable) sections

Testing

• [ ] Adequate tests are created if there is new functionality
• [ ] Tests cover all possible logical paths in your function
• [ ] Tests are not too basic (such as simply calling a function and nothing else)

Documentation

• [ ] Docstrings have been added to all new functions
• [ ] Docstrings have updated with any function changes
• [ ] Internal functions have a preceding underscore (_) and have been added to docs/internal_api/index.rst
• [ ] User functions have been added to docs/user_api/index.rst

Examples

• [ ] Any new notebook examples added to docs/examples/ folder
• [ ] Clear the output of all cells before committing
• [ ] New notebook files added to docs/examples.rst toctree
• [ ] New notebook files added to new entry in docs/gallery.yml with appropriate thumbnail photo in docs/_static/thumbnails/

[philipc2]

HI @ahijevyc

Apologies for not getting to this PR earlier.

Looking at the implementation here, it looks great. It does however bring to light a possible need for us to consider a better, more streamlined, approach to handling these types of groupings and then applying some function on the result.

I mention this because of our Topological Aggregations. For this family of functions, we have distinct methods (i.e. topological_mean()), which looking back at doesn't seem like the preferred approach, especially if we plan to implement groupings like the neighborhood one and perhaps other spatial ones.

Very generally speaking, these functions essentially:

1. Group unstructured grid elements based on some condition/algorithm. Here we use the KD/BallTree to determine the candidate elements, while in the topological aggregations we use the connectivity information
2. Apply some function to the grouping (i.e. mean())
3. Store the results back on the unstructured grid element (node, edge, or face)

I wonder if this would be a good opportunity to extend the inherited .groupby() method from Xarray to support these spatial groupings.

I'm not sure of calling these approaches "kernels" is appropriate, but for the sake of this example, we could provide spatial kernels the user could pass into groupby() and then perform aggregations directly on the result. This feels much more in line with Xarray's design philosophy.

# radial neighborhood of r=0.25
uxds['t2m'].groupby(kernel=ux.BoundingCircle(r=0.25)).mean()

# 2 deg by 2 deg bounding box 
uxds['t2m'].groupby(kernel=ux.BoundingBox(dlon=2, dlat=2))

# group the nodes that surround each face and find the maximum
uxds['node_centered_var'].groupby(kernel=ux.FaceNode()).max()

# this is equivalent to the following in the current release
uxds['node_centered_var'].topological_max(destination='face')

I'll ping @aaronzedwick and @erogluorhan for their thoughts on this. I personally really like the design above and think that it aligns well with the overall design.

[aaronzedwick]

HI @ahijevyc

Apologies for not getting to this PR earlier.

Looking at the implementation here, it looks great. It does however bring to light a possible need for us to consider a better, more streamlined, approach to handling these types of groupings and then applying some function on the result.

I mention this because of our Topological Aggregations. For this family of functions, we have distinct methods (i.e. topological_mean()), which looking back at doesn't seem like the preferred approach, especially if we plan to implement groupings like the neighborhood one and perhaps other spatial ones.

Very generally speaking, these functions essentially:

1. Group unstructured grid elements based on some condition/algorithm. Here we use the KD/BallTree to determine the candidate elements, while in the topological aggregations we use the connectivity information
2. Apply some function to the grouping (i.e. mean())
3. Store the results back on the unstructured grid element (node, edge, or face)

I wonder if this would be a good opportunity to extend the inherited .groupby() method from Xarray to support these spatial groupings.

I'm not sure of calling these approaches "kernels" is appropriate, but for the sake of this example, we could provide spatial kernels the user could pass into groupby() and then perform aggregations directly on the result. This feels much more in line with Xarray's design philosophy.

# radial neighborhood of r=0.25
uxds['t2m'].groupby(kernel=ux.BoundingCircle(r=0.25)).mean()

# 2 deg by 2 deg bounding box 
uxds['t2m'].groupby(kernel=ux.BoundingBox(dlon=2, dlat=2))

# group the nodes that surround each face and find the maximum
uxds['node_centered_var'].groupby(kernel=ux.FaceNode()).max()

# this is equivalent to the following in the current release
uxds['node_centered_var'].topological_max(destination='face')

I'll ping @aaronzedwick and @erogluorhan for their thoughts on this. I personally really like the design above and think that it aligns well with the overall design.

That is interesting. You suggesting changing the way we do aggregations entirely? Then this would affect the reduction PR I am working on then. Perhaps this PR could implement that change if you wish. I am fine with this, if you want to, it sounds like it would be intuitive.

[philipc2]

You suggesting changing the way we do aggregations entirely?

We should be changing the API for it, since the current one is not sustainable if we plan to implement many times of spatial grouping methods.

The underlying functionality would remain mostly unchanged.

Perhaps this PR could implement that change if you wish.

If we do decide to do this, I'll open up a separate PR starting with the topological aggregations.

[aaronzedwick]

You suggesting changing the way we do aggregations entirely?

We should be changing the API for it, since the current one is not sustainable if we plan to implement many times of spatial grouping methods.

The underlying functionality would remain mostly unchanged.

Perhaps this PR could implement that change if you wish.

If we do decide to do this, I'll open up a separate PR starting with the topological aggregations.

So would the reductions PR be obsolete?

[philipc2]

You suggesting changing the way we do aggregations entirely?

We should be changing the API for it, since the current one is not sustainable if we plan to implement many times of spatial grouping methods. The underlying functionality would remain mostly unchanged.

Perhaps this PR could implement that change if you wish.

If we do decide to do this, I'll open up a separate PR starting with the topological aggregations.

So would the reductions PR be obsolete?

No. The underlying implementation would remain the same, since we would still need those implemented.

This would just provide a different interface for it, with a more "Xarray-like" interface.

[aaronzedwick]

You suggesting changing the way we do aggregations entirely?

We should be changing the API for it, since the current one is not sustainable if we plan to implement many times of spatial grouping methods. The underlying functionality would remain mostly unchanged.

Perhaps this PR could implement that change if you wish.

If we do decide to do this, I'll open up a separate PR starting with the topological aggregations.

So would the reductions PR be obsolete?

No. The underlying implementation would remain the same, since we would still need those implemented.

This would just provide a different interface for it, with a more "Xarray-like" interface.

Ah, okay, I see. That makes sense, thanks for the clarification!