About geospatial analysis
Geospatial analysis is the process of reading, manipulating, and summarizing geospatial data to yield useful and interesting results. A lot of the time, you will be answering questions like the following:
- What is the shortest drivable distance between Sausalito and Palm Springs?
- What is the total length of the border between France and Belgium?
- What is the area of each National Park in New Zealand that borders the ocean?
The answer to these sorts of questions will typically be a number or a list of numbers. Other types of geospatial analysis will involve calculating new sets of geospatial data based on existing data. For example:
- Calculate an elevation profile for USA Route 66 from Los Angeles, CA, to Albuquerque, NM.
- Show me the portion of Brazil north of the equator.
- Highlight the area of Rarotonga likely to be flooded if the ocean rose by 2 meters.
In these cases, you will be generating a new set of geospatial data, which you would typically then display in a chart or on a map.
To perform this sort of analysis, you will need two things: appropriate geospatial analysis tools and suitable geospatial data.
We are going to perform some simple geospatial analysis shortly. Before we do, though, let's take a closer look at the concept of geospatial data.
