Home ITCAbout ITCCentres of expertiseCenter of Expertise in Big Geodata ScienceCapacity DevelopmentIntroduction to Geospatial Raster and Vector Data with Python, March 2023

Introduction to Geospatial Raster and Vector Data with Python

Become a high-skilled geospatial professional

Python is one of the most popular programming languages for data science and analytics, with a large and steadily growing community in the field of Earth and Space Sciences. In this workshop, we will help participants with a working knowledge of Python to familiarize with the world of geospatial raster and vector data. We will introduce a set of tools from the Python ecosystem and show how these can be used to carry out practical geospatial data analysis tasks. In particular, we will consider satellite images and public geo-datasets and demonstrate how these can be opened, explored, manipulated, combined, and visualized using Python.

This workshop organized by the Netherlands eScience Center will cover the following aspects of geospatial data processing:

During the workshop, the following Python packages will be covered:

Participants must have access to a computer with a Mac, Linux, or Windows operating system (not a tablet, Chromebook, etc.) that they have administrative privileges on. They should have a few specific software packages installed (see setup instructions link below).

Date

30 and 31 March 2023 (One and a half day training)

Venue

ITC Building, Room 3-008
Hengelosestraat 99, 7514 AE Enschede

Registration

The workshop is open to UT staff and students. Priority will be given to ITC staff and students.

The capacity is limited to 25 people.

Registration is closed. Registration confirmation will be send to the participants on 24 March.

Certificate

Certificate of participation will be provided on request after the training.

Prerequisites

The participants DO NOT need to have prior knowledge on the Python tools this workshop is teaching. However we expect the participant to have a working knowledge of Python, and have had exposure to the Bash shell.

Please note that to participate in this workshop, it is neccessary to prepare the required Python environment before hand. Please follow the setup instructions for the preparation.

Instructors

Dr. Francesco Nattino
Research Software Engineer, eScience Centre

Dr. Francesco Nattino has a master's degree in Chemistry from the University of Milan. His interest in the use of computer simulations to answer research questions brought him to specialize in Theoretical and Computational Chemistry, a field in which he carried out his PhD at Leiden University. After working as a postdoctoral researcher in the Materials Science department at EPFL, Switzerland, Francesco joined the Netherlands eScience Center as a Research Software Engineer in 2020. In such a position, he has combined his experience in HPC/HTC with a newly developed passion for remote-sensing and geospatial data applications. Beside his involvement in research projects, he is also active in teaching: he is a Carpentries instructor and one of the developers of the Carpentries Incubator lesson “Introduction to Geospatial Raster and Vector Data Using Python”.

Ou Ku
Research Software Engineer, eScience Centre

Ou Ku has a background in Earth Observation. He studied Geodesy at Central South University (Changsha, China) for his bachelor’s during 2010-2014. From 2014-2017 he studied at Delft University of Technology (TUDelft) and obtained his master’s degree in Geosciences and Remote Sensing.

For his Masters thesis, he focused on a specific EO technology: Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR), which is applied for large-scale ground deformation monitoring. From 2017-2020, he continued his interest in InSAR and worked in an InSAR company named SkyGeo.

Ou joined the Netherlands eScience Center at the beginning of 2020. He works on several projects under the Environmental and Sustainability section, contributing to research software for vegetation hydro-dynamics, glacier monitoring, and phenology. Besides projects, he also participates in the lesson development of the Netherlands eScience Center. Ou has research interests in scientific computation and visualization for Earth Observation. He also has interests in the application of Deep Learning in the EO domain.

Schedule

Day 1

9:30 - 9:45

Welcome and icebreaker

9:45 - 10:00

Introduction to raster, vector, and CRS

10:00 - 11:00

Access satellite imagery using Python

11:00 - 11:15

Coffee break

11:15 - 12:30

Read and visualize raster data

12:30 - 13:30

Lunch break

13:30 - 14:30

Vector data in Python

14:30 - 14:45

Coffee break

14:45 - 15:45

Raster data preprocessing with rioxarray and geopandas

15:45 - 16:00

Coffee break

16:00 - 16:40

Raster calculations in Python

16:45 - 17:00

Wrap-up

17:00

End of Day 1

Day 2

9:15 - 9:30

Welcome and icebreaker

9:30 - 10:45

Calculating Zonal Statistics on Rasters

10:45 - 11:00

Coffee break

11:00 - 12:15

Parallel raster computations using Dask

12:15 - 12:30

Wrap-up

12:30

END

This event is supported by the Netherlands eScience Center Fellowship Grant NSESC.ESCF.2022.013.

For more information or questions, please contact dr. ing. Serkan Girgin (s.girgin@utwente.nl).