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

Choropleth maps


Choropleth maps also show concentration, however, they use different shades of color to show concentration. This method is useful if related data spans multiple polygons. For example, in a worldwide population density map by country, many countries have disconnected polygons (for example, Hawaii is an island state of the U.S.). In this example, we'll use the Python Imaging Library (PIL) discussed in Chapter 3, The Geospatial Technology Landscape. PIL is not purely Python, but it is designed specifically for Python. We'll recreate our previous dot density example as a choropleth map. We'll calculate a density ratio for each census tract based on the number of people (population) per square kilometer and use that value to adjust the color. The dark areas are more densely populated and the lighter ones are less densely populated, as shown here:

import math
import shapefile
try:
    import Image
    import ImageDraw
except:
    from PIL import Image, ImageDraw

def world2screen...