Data is rarely in the form that it's needed in to perform processing and analysis. Often, data needs to be merged, checked for validity, converted, calculated, projected, and so on, to make it ready for use. This chapter covered many common preparation tasks to convert raw data into a more usable form.
In the next chapter, the theme of data preparation will continue, but it will be applied to raster data. You will learn how to mosaic, reclassify, and convert raster data to make it more meaningful as input for processing tasks.