Introduction

Working with projections, in my opinion, is not too exciting but they're very important, and your ability to deal with them in any application is crucial.

The goal of this chapter is to provide some common predata screening or transformation steps to get your data in shape or, better yet, in position for geospatial analysis. We cannot always perform analysis on multiple datasets that are in different coordinate systems without the risk of achieving inconsistent results, such as data positional inaccuracies. Therefore, it is a best practice to work on data in the same coordinate system, such as EPSG:4326, when working on a global scale, or use a local coordinate system for your region that will provide you the most accurate results.

European Petroleum Survey Group or EPSG codes have decided to give all coordinate systems a number code to simplify finding and sharing projection information. Coordinate systems are described by their definitions, which are stored in text files...