Book Image

Learning Geospatial Analysis with Python - Third Edition

By : Joel Lawhead
Book Image

Learning Geospatial Analysis with Python - Third Edition

By: Joel Lawhead

Overview of this book

Geospatial analysis is used in almost every domain you can think of, including defense, farming, and even medicine. With this systematic guide, you'll get started with geographic information system (GIS) and remote sensing analysis using the latest features in Python. This book will take you through GIS techniques, geodatabases, geospatial raster data, and much more using the latest built-in tools and libraries in Python 3.7. You'll learn everything you need to know about using software packages or APIs and generic algorithms that can be used for different situations. Furthermore, you'll learn how to apply simple Python GIS geospatial processes to a variety of problems, and work with remote sensing data. By the end of the book, you'll be able to build a generic corporate system, which can be implemented in any organization to manage customer support requests and field support personnel.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Section 1: The History and the Present of the Industry
5
Section 2: Geospatial Analysis Concepts
10
Section 3: Practical Geospatial Processing Techniques

GIS

Computer mapping evolved with the computer itself in the 1960s. However, the origin of the term GIS began with the Canadian Department of Forestry and Rural Development. Dr. Roger Tomlinson headed a team of 40 developers in an agreement with IBM to build the Canada Geographic Information System (CGIS). The CGIS tracked the natural resources of Canada and allowed the profiling of those features for further analysis. The CGIS stored each type of land cover as a different layer.

It also stored data in a Canadian-specific coordinate system, suitable for the entire country, which was devised for optimal area calculations. While the technology that was used was primitive by today's standards, the system had phenomenal capability at that time. The CGIS included software features that seem quite modern:

  • Map projection switching
  • The rubber sheeting of scanned images
  • Map scale...