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

Chapter 4. Geospatial Python Toolbox

The first three chapters of this book covered the history of geospatial analysis, the types of geospatial data used by analysts, and the major software and libraries found within the geospatial industry. We used some simple Python examples here and there to illustrate certain points, but we focused mainly on the field of geospatial analysis independent of any specific technology.

Starting here, we will be using Python to conquer geospatial analysis and we will continue with that approach for the rest of the book. In this chapter, we'll discover the Python libraries used to access the different types of data found in the Vector data and Raster data sections of Chapter 2, Geospatial Data. Some of these libraries are pure Python and some are bindings to the different software packages found in Chapter 3, The Geospatial Technology Landscape.

We will examine pure Python solutions whenever possible. Python is a very capable programming language, but some operations...