Geospatial

Python pathway

Programming Foundations / Practice rooms / Track curriculum and enrollment

1. Coordinates & the Earth

   Every map starts with a pair of numbers: latitude and longitude. This project builds fluency with them, validating and normalizing coordinates, converting between degrees-minutes-seconds and decimal degrees, working with bounding boxes, and measuring the spherical Earth itself, how long a degree really is, and why that depends on where you stand.

   • Latitude & Longitude: 5 lessons
   • Bounding Boxes: 5 lessons
   • The Spherical Earth: 5 lessons
   • Coordinate Cleaning: 5 lessons
   • Features & GeoJSON: 5 lessons

2. Distance & Geodesics

   Use a 6371-km sphere for great-circle distances, bearings and destinations. Compare these with explicitly local planar route calculations, then summarize GPS lengths, speeds and elapsed time, including stops.

   • The Haversine Formula: 5 lessons
   • Bearings: 5 lessons
   • Destination Points: 5 lessons
   • Off-Track Distance: 5 lessons
   • GPS Tracks: 5 lessons

3. Map Projections

   Build spherical equirectangular and Mercator formulas, a common XYZ Web Mercator tile scheme, and simple distortion calculations. Keep angular projection coordinates, metres and screen pixels distinct; choose a model for the intended use.

   • Equirectangular: 5 lessons
   • Mercator: 5 lessons
   • Web Mercator Tiles: 5 lessons
   • Measuring Distortion: 5 lessons
   • Working with Projections: 5 lessons

4. Vector Geometry

   Build planar single-ring point tests, shoelace area and centroid, proper-crossing predicates, supporting-line intersections and gift-wrapping hulls. Study an explicitly infinite-line-distance simplification variant; these exercises are not complete polygon-validity or general GIS geometry implementations.

   • Point in Polygon: 5 lessons
   • Area & Centroid: 5 lessons
   • Segment Intersection: 5 lessons
   • Convex Hulls: 5 lessons
   • Line Simplification: 5 lessons

5. Spatial Indexing

   Build grids, geohashes, a bounded quadtree and a small bounding-box hierarchy. Separate candidate windows and approximate nearest lookup from exact queries. Count modeled work without inferring measured speed, and retain observations at cell boundaries and duplicate coordinates.

   • Grid Indexing: 5 lessons
   • Geohash: 5 lessons
   • Quadtrees: 5 lessons
   • Nearest Neighbor: 5 lessons
   • A Bounding-Box Tree: 5 lessons

6. Rasters & DEMs

   Georeference a north-up raster, sample values, calculate signed finite differences and illuminate terrain with a consistent sun/normal convention. Explore lowest-neighbor flow and one-pass strict-pit filling as simplified terrain exercises, not full D8 hydrology.

   • Georeferencing: 5 lessons
   • Resampling: 5 lessons
   • Slope & Aspect: 5 lessons
   • Hillshade: 5 lessons
   • Flow & Watersheds: 5 lessons

7. Spatial Interpolation

   Compare nearest, inverse-distance and triangular interpolation on finite planar samples. Grid predicted fields and use leave-one-out errors to choose candidate powers. Parameter tuning and independent final performance assessment are separate steps.

   • Nearest & Means: 5 lessons
   • Inverse Distance Weighting: 5 lessons
   • Triangles & Barycentric: 5 lessons
   • Gridding a Field: 5 lessons
   • Cross-Validation: 5 lessons

8. Spatial Analysis

   Count planar buffers, join points to simple rings, grow DBSCAN clusters and form raw conical intensity surfaces. Calculate a specified rook-weight Moran statistic; toy interpretation labels do not establish statistical significance or randomness.

   • Buffers: 5 lessons
   • Spatial Joins: 5 lessons
   • Clustering: 5 lessons
   • Density & Heatmaps: 5 lessons
   • Spatial Autocorrelation: 5 lessons

9. Seismology & Geophysics

   Use constant-speed travel times and a planar grid-search location model, illustrative magnitude calculations and energy-window triggers. Distinguish these teaching models from calibrated seismic inversion, phase identification and hazard assessment.

   • Travel Times: 5 lessons
   • Locating the Epicenter: 5 lessons
   • Magnitude & Energy: 5 lessons
   • Seismic Signals: 5 lessons
   • Earthquake Catalogs: 5 lessons

10. Capstone: A Mini GIS Engine

    Assemble a testable MiniGIS facade over validated internal Point layers. Build conservative grid candidates, run exact bbox/radius/polygon filters and global nearest scans, report local-layer analytics, and execute eligibility-first site selection. Convert supported internal records explicitly to GeoJSON; no map UI, GIS-compliance or speed guarantee is implied.

    • The Layer Store: 5 lessons
    • Indexing the Store: 5 lessons
    • The Query API: 5 lessons
    • Layer Analytics: 5 lessons
    • Site Selection: 5 lessons