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Introduction to GIS Programming

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Introduction

Welcome to the official repository for Introduction to GIS Programming: A Practical Python Guide to Open Source Geospatial Tools. This repository contains all the code examples featured in the book, designed to help you learn and apply Python for geospatial analysis using open-source tools.

Get the Book

PDF and EPUB Editions

🇺🇸 English | 🇨🇳 Chinese | 🇯🇵 Japanese | 🇰🇷 Korean | 🇲🇽 Spanish | 🇫🇷 French | 🇵🇹 Portuguese | 🇮🇩 Indonesian | 🇩🇪 German | 🇷🇺 Russian | 🇮🇹 Italian | 🇨🇿 Czech

Cite the Book

If you use this book in your research or teaching, please consider citing it as follows:

Wu, Q. (2025). Introduction to GIS Programming: A Practical Python Guide to Open Source Geospatial Tools. Independently published. ISBN 979-8286979455. https://amazon.com/dp/B0FFW34LL3

book cover

Table of Contents

To download a PDF version of the Table of Contents, please visit https://gispro.gishub.org/book-toc.pdf.

How to Run Code Examples

The code examples are organized into folders, each corresponding to a chapter in the book. The code examples are written in Python and can be run using MyBinder, Google Colab, or Docker. Follow this video tutorial to learn how to run the code examples.

Using MyBinder

The code examples can be run using MyBinder.

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Using Google Colab

The code examples can be run using Google Colab.

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Using Docker

The code examples can be run using Docker. There are two Docker images available:

A lightweight docker image without Apache Sedona:

docker pull giswqs/pygis:book
docker run -it -p 8888:8888 -v $(pwd):/app/workspace giswqs/pygis:book

A docker image with Apache Sedona:

docker pull giswqs/pygis:sedona
docker run -it -p 8888:8888 -p 4040:4040 -p 8080:8080 -p 8081:8081 -p 7077:7077 -p 8085:8085 -v $(pwd):/app/workspace giswqs/pygis:sedona

Video Tutorials

Complementing the written content, this book is supported by a comprehensive series of video tutorials that walk through key concepts and provide additional examples:

https://tinyurl.com/intro-gispro-videos

The videos are designed to complement, not replace, the written material. They’re particularly helpful for:

The playlist is organized to follow the book’s structure. You can watch them in order as you progress through the book, or jump to specific topics as needed.

The videos were created in Fall 2024 when I was teaching the Introduction to GIS Programming course at the University of Tennessee. Although the course has concluded, the videos remain relevant and can be used as a reference for the book. Additional videos will be added in the future.

Enroll for Certification

Please note that you can access the course materials and lecture videos on the course website without enrolling in the course. However, if you’re interested in submitting lab assignments, receiving grades, and earning a certificate of completion, you can enroll in the course at any time by clicking the link below. There is no deadline for enrollment, and you can complete the course at your own pace.

Enroll Now

About the Author

Dr. Qiusheng Wu is an Associate Professor and the Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Geography & Sustainability at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He also serves as an Amazon Scholar. Dr. Wu’s research focuses on geospatial data science and open-source software development, with an emphasis on leveraging big geospatial data and cloud computing to study environmental change, particularly surface water and wetland inundation dynamics. He is the creator of several widely used open-source Python packages, including geemap, leafmap, segment-geospatial, and geoai, which support advanced geospatial analysis and interactive visualization. His open-source work is available at the Open Geospatial Solutions on GitHub.

This book embraces the principles of open science and open education. To support transparency, learning, and reuse, the code examples in this book are released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license. This means you are free to copy, modify, and distribute the code, even for commercial purposes, as long as appropriate credit is given.

Please attribute code usage by citing the book or linking to the GitHub repository:

Wu, Q. (2025). Introduction to GIS Programming: A Practical Python Guide to Open Source Geospatial Tools. Independently published. ISBN 979-8286979455. https://amazon.com/dp/B0FFW34LL3

While the code is freely available, the text, figures, and images in this book are copyrighted by the author and may not be reproduced, redistributed, or modified without explicit permission. This includes all written content, custom diagrams, and embedded visualizations unless otherwise noted.

If you wish to reuse or adapt any non-code material from the book—for example, for teaching, presentations, or publications—please contact the author to request permission.

This dual licensing approach helps balance open access to learning materials with the protection of original creative work. Thank you for respecting these terms and supporting the open-source geospatial community.

Acknowledgments

This book was written using MyST Markdown and compiled using Typst with the min-book template. Credits to developers and maintainers of the Typst and MyST Markdown projects. Special thanks to @mayconfmelo for the min-book template and their help with customizing the template for this book.

Preface
Preface