Fast polygon rasterization

In some cases, the {fasterize} package is several times faster than GDAL for polygon rasterisation.

Code

library("sf")
library("raster")
library("fasterize")

## download data
options(timeout = 600)
tmp = tempdir()
r_ouput = file.path(tmp, "output.tif")
f = file.path(tmp, "Mammals_Terrestrial.zip")
download.file("https://s3.amazonaws.com/hp3-shapefiles/Mammals_Terrestrial.zip",
              destfile = f) # 383 MB
unzip(f, exdir = tmp)

{fasterize}

system.time({
  mammal_shapes = read_sf(file.path(tmp, "Mammals_Terrestrial"))
  mammal_raster = raster(mammal_shapes, res = 0.1)
  r = fasterize(mammal_shapes, mammal_raster, field = "PRESENCE")
  writeRaster(r, r_ouput, options = "COMPRESS=LZW", datatype = "INT1U", NAflag = 0)
})

##    user  system elapsed 
##    6.18    0.91    7.11

{GDAL}

system.time({
  gdal_utils(util = "rasterize",
             source = file.path(tmp, "Mammals_Terrestrial"),
             destination = r_ouput,
             options = c("-a", "PRESENCE",
                         "-tr", 0.1, 0.1,
                         "-a_nodata", 0,
                         "-ot", "Byte",
                         "-co", "COMPRESS=LZW"))
})

##    user  system elapsed 
##   21.61    7.70   29.44