How the Great American Ball Park seat and sun data is measured

Every number comes from a USGS lidar survey of the ballpark, NOAA solar equations, the official outfield distances and published row lists. Nothing is estimated from photos.

Sources

Ballpark shape: USGS 3D Elevation Program lidar: Ohio Statewide Phase 3 2021 collection. First-return points gridded to 1 m, noise removed.
Home plate: placed so the measured outfield wall matches the outfield distances in the scan; the fit is within about 2 m.
Section order and direction from home plate: a public ticket map of the ballpark (section and row centre points only). It is not drawn to scale, so it gives each section's direction; distances and heights come from the lidar.
Row lists and covered rows: rateyourseats.com.
Gates, bags, food and policies: the Great American Ball Park A-Z guide.
Sun: NOAA solar position equations. Weather: ERA5 reanalysis via Open-Meteo.

How shade is computed

Each section is sampled on 3 lines at every row, 6750 seat points in total. For each point the ballpark surface is scanned in every direction the sun can come from, including the upper deck and its roof. A seat is in direct sun when the sun is higher than that horizon. Games are sampled every 10 minutes for 2 hours 50 minutes, on the 15th of each month from April to September, at 1:10 pm, 6:40 pm.

How rows are placed

A line is walked out from home plate through each section and the measured rake is split into decks by height jumps. Rows are spread over the visible slope in front of the published cover row. Premium boxes at the front of the lower bowl use the row positions from the ticket map, with heights from the lidar.

Limits

Sections 101, 102, 107, 137 and 146 are not modelled: the outfield seats in front of the 400s and 137 run up onto the deck behind them in the scan, and 146 gave no clean rake.
The 400s and 500s on the View Level share one rake: the 400s take the front rows and the 500s start behind them, so the row split between them is from the published row lists, not seen in the scan.
Field boxes 1 to 5 and 22 to 25, suites, the 306 and 307 boxes, the Fioptics District, the Porch, standing room and the bullpen decks are not modelled as seats.
Covered rows come from rateyourseats. The aircraft scan sees the roof, not the seats under it.
Capacity changed in 2021 (42,319 to 43,500), the same year as the scan; the Reds dugout side is from rateyourseats and our map fit, as the Reds do not publish it.

Downloads (CC BY 4.0)

sun-by-section.csv: month, start time, section, minutes of sun, shade arrival
sections.json: section geometry and row-by-row sightlines