This chapter will focus on applying Python to functions typically performed by a geographic information system (GIS) such as QGIS or ArcGIS. We will continue to use as few external dependencies as possible outside Python itself, so you have tools which are as reusable as possible in different environments. In this book, we separate GIS analysis and remote sensing from programming perspective, which means that in this chapter, we'll focus on mostly vector data.
As with other chapters in this book, the items presented here are core functions that serve as building blocks which can be recombined to solve challenges you will encounter beyond this book. This chapter includes the following topics:
Measuring distance
Converting coordinates
Reprojecting vector data
Editing shapefiles
Selecting data from within larger datasets
Creating thematic maps
Conversion of non-GIS data types
Geocoding
This chapter contains many code samples. In addition to the text...