This chapter covered the critical components of GIS analysis including:
The challenges of measuring on the curved surface of the Earth and solutions
The basics of coordinate conversion between the geographic and UTM reference systems
Reprojection using OGR (pretty much the only game in town worthwhile!)
Details about editing shapefiles in pure Python using PyShp
Performing spatial selections on data using geometry or attributes
Creating thematic maps from scratch using only Python
Importing data from spreadsheets
Parsing GPS data from NMEA or GPX
As a geospatial analyst, you may be familiar with both GIS and remote sensing, but most analysts specialize in one field or the other. That is why this book approaches the fields in separate chapters, to focus on their differences. In Chapter 6, Python and Remote Sensing, we'll tackle remote sensing. In GIS, we have been able to explore the field using pure Python modules. In remote sensing, we'll become more dependent on bindings to compiled modules...