Chapter 5. Python and Geographic Information Systems
This chapter will focus on applying Python to functions typically performed by a geographic information system (GIS) such as QGIS or ArcGIS. We will continue to use as few external dependencies as possible outside Python itself, so you have tools which are as reusable as possible in different environments. In this book, we separate GIS analysis and remote sensing from programming perspective, which means that in this chapter, we'll focus on mostly vector data.
As with other chapters in this book, the items presented here are core functions that serve as building blocks which can be recombined to solve challenges you will encounter beyond this book. This chapter includes the following topics:
- Measuring distance
- Converting coordinates
- Reprojecting vector data
- Editing shapefiles
- Selecting data from within larger datasets
- Creating thematic maps
- Conversion of non-GIS data types
- Geocoding
This chapter contains many code samples. In addition...
