Chapter 2. Geospatial Data
In this chapter, we will focus on the data used for geospatial analysis. You will learn more about the nature of geospatial data, and discover some of the major websites you can use to obtain geospatial datasets for free. We will then look at the ways in which you can read and write geospatial data using Python.
In particular, this chapter will cover the following topics:
- Why having high quality geospatial data is important
- The various types of geospatial data you are likely to encounter
- Major sources of freely-available geospatial datasets
- How to read and write geospatial data using the GDAL/OGR library
- How to work with Spatial Reference Systems
- Geospatial data errors and how to fix them
Let's start by looking at why having high-quality geospatial data is important.
