Efficient operations with spatial indexing

Over the course of this book, we’ve worked with spatial datasets of varying sizes. However, given the nature of the case studies and the need for simplicity, we haven’t worked with very large spatial datasets. As spatial datasets grow in size and cover larger geographic areas, you will often need to find ways to access and perform operations on the data more efficiently. One way to add efficiency to your spatial data science workflows is through the use of spatial indexing. A spatial index is a way of structuring your data in a way that makes accessing and performing operations on the spatial object more efficient as compared to sequentially scanning every record in the dataset. Spatial indexing, at times, can dramatically increase the speed of spatial operations, including spatial joins and intersections.

There are many types of spatial indexes available in both commercial and open source software, and there are far too...