Making Predictions (Inference)¶
A major focus of Raster Vision is to generate models that can quickly be used to
predict, or run inference, on new imagery. To accomplish this, the last step in the chain of commands
applied to an experiment is the BUNDLE command, which generates a “predict package”.
This predict package contains all the necessary model files and configuration to
make predictions using the model that was trained by an experiment.
How to make predictions with models train by Raster Vision¶
With a predict package, we can call the predict command from the command line client, or use the Predictor class to generate predictions from a predict package directly from Python code.
With the command line, you are loading the model and saving the label output in a single call.
If you need to call this for a large number of files, consider using the Predictor in
Python code, as this will allow you to load the model once and use it many times. This can
matter a lot if you want the time-to-prediction to be as fast as possible - the model
load time can be orders of magnitudes slower than the prediction time of a loaded model.
The Predictor class is the most flexible way to integrate Raster Vision models
into other systems, whether in large PySpark batch jobs or in web servers running
on GPU systems.
Predict Package¶
The predict package is a zip file containing the model file and the configuration necessary for Raster Vision to use the model. The model file or files are specific to the backend: for Keras, there’s a single serialized Keras model file, and for TensorFlow there is the protobuf serialized inference graph. But this is not all that is needed to create predictions. The data that was trained on was potentially processed in specific ways by rastertransformer, and the model could have trained on a subset of bands dictated by the rastersource. We need to know about the configuration of what’s coming out of the model as a prediction in order to properly serialize it to GeoJSON, raster data, or whatever other labelstore was used to serialize labels. The prediction logic needs to know what Task is being used to apply any transformations that take raw model output and transform it to meaningful classifications or other predictions.
The predict package holds all of this necessary information, so that a prediction call only needs to know what imagery it is predicting against. This works generically over all models produced by Raster Vision, without additional client considerations, and therefore abstracts away the specifics of every model when considering how to deploy prediction software.
