Raster vectorizer

[msbarry]

There are a few applications where having a high-performance raster vectorizer will be necessary:

• [FEATURE] contour lines #12
• World landcover dataset #550
• and possibly also an alternative way to merge overlapping polygons (rasterize -> dilate -> erode -> vectorize)

[wipfli]

Great idea, would be amazing to have for stuff like https://github.com/wipfli/swisstopo-vector-hillshade...

[msbarry]

Yeah I started pulling in gdal java bindings for this kind of stuff, but I realized everything I needed from it is really just a variation of vectorizing raster datasets... so if we can get this implemented it opens the door to a lot of other applications

[dBitech]

I'm no Java expert but leaving this here for idea tracking purposes: https://github.com/geotools/geotools/blob/main/modules/unsupported/process-raster/src/main/java/org/geotools/process/raster/PolygonExtractionProcess.java