This chapter provided an overview of major data types in GIS. After explaining the difference between vector and raster data, the following vector and raster data types were covered—Esri shapefiles, GeoJSON, KML, GeoPackages, and GeoTIFF files. Next, we explained how to use some of the earlier described Python code libraries to read and write geospatial data. The following geospatial Python libraries for reading and writing raster and vector data were covered in particular—GeoPandas, OGR, GDAL, and Rasterio. Apart from reading and writing different geospatial data types, you learned how to use these libraries to perform file conversion between different data types and how to upload and download data from geospatial databases and remote sources.
The next chapter will cover geospatial analysis and processing. Python libraries covered are OGR, Shapely and GeoPandas. The reader will learn how to use these libraries and write scripts for geospatial analysis, using real-world examples.
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