Book Image

Learning Geospatial Analysis with Python - Fourth Edition

By : Joel Lawhead
4 (1)
Book Image

Learning Geospatial Analysis with Python - Fourth Edition

4 (1)
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. In this special 10th anniversary edition, you'll embark on an exhilarating geospatial analysis adventure using Python. This fourth edition starts with the fundamental concepts, enhancing your expertise in geospatial analysis processes with the help of illustrations, basic formulas, and pseudocode for real-world applications. As you progress, you’ll explore the vast and intricate geospatial technology ecosystem, featuring thousands of software libraries and packages, each offering unique capabilities and insights. This book also explores practical Python GIS geospatial applications, remote sensing data, elevation data, and the dynamic world of geospatial modeling. It emphasizes the predictive and decision-making potential of geospatial technology, allowing you to visualize complex natural world concepts, such as environmental conservation, urban planning, and disaster management to make informed choices. You’ll also learn how to leverage Python to process real-time data and create valuable information products. By the end of this book, you'll have acquired the knowledge and techniques needed to build a complete geospatial application that can generate a report and can be further customized for different purposes.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
1
Part 1:The History and the Present of the Industry
5
Part 2:Geospatial Analysis Concepts
11
Part 3:Practical Geospatial Processing Techniques

PyMySQL

The popular MySQL (available at http://dev.mysql.com/downloads) database system is gradually evolving spatial functions. It has support for OGC geometries and a few spatial functions. It also has a pure Python API available in the PyMySQL library. The limited spatial functions use planar geometry and bounding rectangles as opposed to spherical geometry and shapes. The latest development release of MySQL contains some additional functions that improve this capability.

In the following example, we’ll create a database in MySQL called spatial_db. Then, we’ll add a table called PLACES with a geometry column. Next, we’ll add two cities as point locations. Finally, we’ll calculate the distance using MySQL’s ST_Distance function and then convert the result from degrees into miles. In order to perform this example, you’ll have to install MySQL following the instructions on the download site.

First, we will import our mysql library and...