Geospatial analysis is the process of reading, manipulating, and summarizing geospatial data to yield useful and interesting results. A lot of the time, you will be answering questions like the following:
What is the shortest drivable distance between Sausalito and Palm Springs?
What is the total length of the border between France and Belgium?
What is the area of each National Park in New Zealand that borders the ocean?
The answer to these sorts of questions will typically be a number or a list of numbers. Other types of geospatial analysis will involve calculating new sets of geospatial data based on existing data. For example:
In these cases, you will be generating a new set of geospatial data, which you would typically then display in a chart or on a map.
To perform this sort of analysis, you will need two things: appropriate geospatial analysis tools and suitable geospatial data.
We are going to perform some simple geospatial analysis shortly. Before we do, though, let's take a closer look at the concept of geospatial data.