Course info

Update: Course will be conducted online

Due to the current situation, the PhD Study Director has decided that PhD courses scheduled for April, May and June should take place as online courses. For this particular course, this will mean that we will provide you with resources for self-study – a combination of video lectures, readings, and exercises – to go through at your own pace. In addition, there will be Q&A sessions on Microsoft Teams twice for each of the three days, and the two course organizers will be available online for advice for the three days as well.

 

Content
The PhD course Python for Geospatial Analysis will provide an introduction to Python with a focus on mapping, exploring, processing, and analyzing geospatial information using Python. Participants will learn how tasks traditionally conducted in a desktop GIS system can be easily transferred to Python code and therefore made faster, more flexible, and completely reproducible, which is an aspect of increasing importance in many research fields. At the end of this course, participants will have a solid understanding of the capabilities of core Python modules for geospatial information such as fiona, geopandas, pysal, or rasterio and be able to apply them in their own research.

This course will focus on geospatial analysis in “pure” Python, i.e., automation of tasks in ArcGIS or QGIS with Python is out of scope for this course. However, participants looking to do this should be sufficiently proficient in Python after this course to accomplish these tasks on their own.

Day 1: General introduction to Python, mapping and explorative analysis of geographic information

Day 2: The Python stack for geospatial analysis

Day 3: Using geospatial web services from Python

Organization
The course will consist of 3 parts, which in combination will be worth 3 ECTS for the participants. Part 1 consists of introductory readings as well as setting up the software environment on the participants’ machine before we start our face-to-face sessions. This second part will consist of the three days in April where we will meet at AAU CPH. Each day will consist of more lecture-oriented content in the morning, and extensive hands-on exercises in the afternoon. On the last day of the meeting, a larger project will be introduced that has to be completed and delivered by each participant as the third part of the course.

Prerequisites
While this course will introduce Python from scratch (i.e., no previous experience in Python is required), participants should have a basic understanding of programming principles, e.g. know what a variable, a function, or a loop is. Likewise, we do not expect participants to be GIS experts, but again, a basic understanding of geographic information concepts such as layers or vector/raster formats is expected. Ideally, participants in this course would already be using GIS in some way for their research and be looking for ways to do this more efficiently.

Organiser/s: Carsten Kessler, Jamal Jokar Arsanjani
Lecturer(s): Carsten Kessler, Jamal Jokar Arsanjani

ECTS for students: 3
Time: 27–29 May 2020
Place: Aalborg University, Copenhagen - ONLINE 
Deadline for registration: 6 May 2020
Max. no. of participants: 20

Important information concerning PhD courses: We have over some time experienced problems with no-show for both project and general courses. It has now reached a point where we are forced to take action. Therefore, the Doctoral School has decided to introduce a no-show fee of DKK 3,000 for each course where the student does not show up. Cancellations are accepted no later than 2 weeks before start of the course. Registered illness is of course an acceptable reason for not showing up on those days. Furthermore, all courses open for registration approximately four months before start. This can hopefully also provide new students a chance to register for courses during the year. We look forward to your registrations.