Introducing the Fundamentals of Geospatial Analytics

Understanding where something happened is often the key to understanding why it occurred in the first place. A flood wipes out a village in a remote country 1,000 miles away. If you are thinking geospatially, you are curious about climate forecasting, the demographics of the population, the nature of the soil, the topography of the land, and building footprints or structures. The ability to point to a spot on a map is only a small part of data collection. When you begin to think about roads and distances to impacted villages requiring disaster relief, you would be limited by point-to-point Cartesian geometry. This chapter will help you to understand why.

The process of detecting and quantifying patterns in datasets requires data exploration, visualization, data engineering, and the application of analysis and spatial techniques. At its core, geospatial technology provides an opportunity to explore location intelligence and how...