Book Image

Learning Geospatial Analysis with Python

By : Joel Lawhead
Book Image

Learning Geospatial Analysis with Python

By: Joel Lawhead

Overview of this book

Geospatial Analysis is used in almost every field you can think of from medicine, to defense, to farming. This book will guide you gently into this exciting and complex field. It walks you through the building blocks of geospatial analysis and how to apply them to influence decision making using the latest Python software. Learning Geospatial Analysis with Python, 2nd Edition uses the expressive and powerful Python 3 programming language to guide you through geographic information systems, remote sensing, topography, and more, while providing a framework for you to approach geospatial analysis effectively, but on your own terms. We start by giving you a little background on the field, and a survey of the techniques and technology used. We then split the field into its component specialty areas: GIS, remote sensing, elevation data, advanced modeling, and real-time data. This book will teach you everything you need to know about, Geospatial Analysis from using a particular software package or API to using generic algorithms that can be applied. This book focuses on pure Python whenever possible to minimize compiling platform-dependent binaries, so that you don’t become bogged down in just getting ready to do analysis. This book will round out your technical library through handy recipes that will give you a good understanding of a field that supplements many a modern day human endeavors.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Learning Geospatial Analysis with Python Second Edition
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Data structures


Despite dozens of formats, geospatial data have common traits. Understanding these traits can help you approach and understand unfamiliar data formats by identifying the ingredients common to nearly all spatial data. The structure of a given data format is usually driven by its intended use. Some data is optimized for efficient storage or compression, some is optimized for efficient access, some is designed to be lightweight and readable (web formats), while other data formats seek to contain as many different data types as possible.

Interestingly, some of the most popular formats today are also some of the simplest and even lack features found in more capable and sophisticated formats. Ease of use is extremely important to geospatial analysts because so much time is spent integrating data into geographic information systems as well as exchanging data among analysts. Simple data formats facilitate these activities the best.

Common traits

Geospatial analysis is an approach applying...