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

Web services


Geospatial web services allow users to perform data discovery, data visualization, and data access across the web. Web services are usually accessed by applications based on user input such as zooming an online map or searching a data catalogue. The most common protocols are the Web Map Service (WMS) that returns a rendered map image and Web Feature Service (WFS) that typically returns GML, which was mentioned in this chapter's introduction. Many WFS services can also return KML, JSON, zipped shapefiles, and other formats. These services are called through HTTP GET requests. The following URL is an example of a WMS GET request, which returns a map image of the world that is 640 pixels wide and 400 pixels tall and an EPSG code of 900913:

http://osm.woc.noaa.gov/mapcache?SERVICE=wms&VERSION=1.1.1&REQUEST=GetMap&FORMAT=image/png&WIDTH=600&HEIGHT=400&LAYERS=osm&SRS=EPSG:900913&BBOX=-20037508,-20037508,20037508,20037508

Web services are rapidly evolving...