Overview and learning goals

This part of the book introduces how to work with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and perform spatial data analysis. Chapter 5 provides a general background about why Python can be useful for geographic data analysis and how spatial data are represented on a computer. Chapter 6 focuses on interacting with vector data and common data manipulation operations. Chapter 7 presents how to process raster data and perform common calculations with these data. Chapter 8 introduces various ways to produce static and interactive geographic data visualizations. Chapter 9 describes how to access and use common online geographic data sources, such as OpenStreetMap.

Learning goals

At the end of this part, you should be able to:

• Explain how GIS data are represented on a computer and common data file formats

• Interact with and manipulate geographic vector data

• Read and process geographic raster datasets

• Create static and interactive geographic data visualizations using various Python libraries

• Access and analyze data from a variety of common online geographic data sources