Book Image

Learning Geospatial Analysis with Python

By : Joel Lawhead
4 (1)
Book Image

Learning Geospatial Analysis with Python

4 (1)
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. It is an approach to use statistical analysis and other informational engineering to data which has a geographical or geospatial aspect. And this typically involves applications capable of geospatial display and processing to get a compiled and useful data. "Learning Geospatial Analysis with Python" uses the expressive and powerful Python programming language to guide you through geographic information systems, remote sensing, topography, and more. It explains how to use a framework in order to approach Geospatial analysis effectively, but on your own terms. "Learning Geospatial Analysis with Python" starts with a background of the field, a survey of the techniques and technology used, and then splits the field into its component speciality areas: GIS, remote sensing, elevation data, advanced modelling, and real-time data. This book will teach you everything there is to know, from using a particular software package or API to using generic algorithms that can be applied to Geospatial analysis. 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. "Learning Geospatial Analysis with Python" will round out your technical library with handy recipes and a good understanding of a field that supplements many a modern day human endeavors.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Learning Geospatial Analysis with Python
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Storm chasing


So far we have created a simpler version of what the Nextbus website already does. But we have done it in a way that ultimately gives us complete control over the output. Now we want use this control to go beyond what the Nextbus Google Maps mash-up does. We'll add another real-time data source which is very important to both travellers and bus-line operators: weather.

OpenWeatherMap.org (OWM) provides free, polished weather data for applications. They also have an excellent website for exploring data sets. The following screenshot is a snapshot of the weather over the Thunder Bay area. The area of our Nextbus tracking feed is circled in black:

We use this data to create a real-time weather map for our bus location map. We'll need to use a different approach to create this geospatial product because the OSM StaticMap API does not allow blended overlays like the image shown in the preceding screenshot. Both the OSM and OWM data are typically served out in small tiles to speed...