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

Computational geometry


Computational geometry encompasses the algorithms needed to perform operations on vector data. The field is very old in computer science; however, most of the libraries used for geospatial operations are separate from computer graphics libraries because of geospatial coordinate systems. As described near the end of Chapter 1, Learning Geospatial Analysis with Python, computer screen coordinates are almost always expressed in positive numbers, while geospatial coordinate systems often use negative numbers when they're moving west and south.

Several different geospatial libraries fit into the category but serve a wide range of uses from spatial selection to rendering. It should be noted that some features of the OGR Simple Features Library described previously move it beyond the category of data access and into the realm of computational geometry. But, it was included in the prior category because that is its primary purpose.

Computational geometry is a fascinating subject...