Vector layers (geopandas)

Last updated: 2026-02-12 16:03:56

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Introduction

In the previous chapter, we worked with individual geometries using the shapely package (Geometries (shapely)). In GIS paractice, however, we usually work with vector layers, rather than individual geometries. Vector layers can be thought of as:

• a collection of (one or more) geometries,

• associated with (zero or more) non-spatial attributes, and

• associated with a Coordinate Reference System (CRS) definition (possibly “undefined”)

In this chapter, we introduce the geopandas package for working with vector layers. First, we are going to see how a vector layer can be created from scratch (see Creating a GeoDataFrame), based on shapely geometries, to understand the relation between shapely and geopandas data structures, namely:

• GeoSeries—A geometry column, i.e., a collection of shapely geometries with a CRS definition

• GeoDataFrame—A vector layer, i.e., a table containing a GeoSeries

Then, we go on to cover some of the basic operations and workflows with vector layers using the geopandas package:

• Reading vector layers—Importing a vector layer from a file, such as a Shapefile

• Plotting (geopandas)—Plotting vector layers

• Filtering by attributes—Selecting features by attribute

• Table to point layer—Creating a point layer from a table

• Points to line (geopandas)—Converting a point layer to a line layer

• Writing GeoDataFrame to file—Writing a vector layer to file

In the next chapter (Geometric operations), we are going to cover spatial operations with geopandas, such as calculating new geometries (buffers, etc.) and spatial join.

What is geopandas?

geopandas, as the name suggests, is an extension of pandas that enables working with spatial (geographic) data, specifically with vector layers. To facilitate the representation of spatial data, geopandas defines two data structures, which are extensions of the analogous data structures from pandas for non-spatial data:

• GeoSeries—An extension of a Series (see Creating a Series) for storing a sequence of geometries and a Coordinate Reference System (CRS) definition, whereas each geometry is a shapely object (see Geometries (shapely))

• GeoDataFrame—An extension of a DataFrame (see Creating a DataFrame), where one of the columns is a GeoSeries

As will be demostrated in a moment (see Creating a GeoDataFrame), a GeoDataFrame, representing a vector layer, is thus a combination (Fig. 47) of:

• A GeoSeries, which holds the geometries in a special “geometry” column

• Zero or more Series, which represent the non-spatial attributes

Since geopandas is based on pandas, many of the DataFrame workflows and operators we learned about earlier (see Tables (pandas) and Table reshaping and joins) work exactly the same way with a GeoDataFrame. This is especially true for operations that involve just the non-spatial properties, such as filtering by attributes (see Filtering by attributes).

Fig. 47 GeoDataFrame structure (source: https://geopandas.org/getting_started/introduction.html)

The geopandas package depends on several other Python packages, most importantly:

• numpy

• pandas

• pyogrio—Interface to GDAL/OGR

• shapely—Interface to GEOS (see Geometries (shapely))

• pyproj—Interface to PROJ

To put it another way, geopandas may be considered a “wrapper” of pyogrio, shapely, and pyproj, giving access to all (or most) of their functionality through pandas-based data structures and simpler-to-use methods. Compared to other packages, geopandas may be considered a high-level approach for working with vector layers in Python. A lower-level approach is provided through the fiona package, for example. The osgeo package provides (through its ogr sub-package) another, more low-level, approach for vector layer access.

Since geopandas is simpler to learn and work with than its alternatives, it is the recommended approach for the purposes in this book. For instance, using fiona and osgeo we typically have to process vector features one-by-one inside a for loop, while in geopandas the entire layer is being ‘read’ and processed at once. Nevertheless, in some situations it is necessary to resort to lower-level approaches. For example, processing features one-by-one is essential when the layer is too big to fit in memory.

Vector layer from scratch

Creating a GeoSeries

Before starting to work with geopandas, we have to load it. We also load pandas and shapely, which we are already familiar with, since they are needed for some of the examples:

import pandas as pd
import shapely
import geopandas as gpd

As a first step to learn about geopandas, we are going to create a geometry column (GeoSeries), and then a vector layer (GeoDataFrame) (see Creating a GeoDataFrame) from sratch. This will help us get a better understanding of the structure of a GeoDataFrame (Fig. 47).

Let’s start with the geometry column, i.e., a GeoSeries. The geometric component of our layer is going to be a sequence of two 'Polygon' geometries, hereby named pol1 and pol2 (see shapely from WKT):

pol1 = shapely.from_wkt('POLYGON ((0 0, 0 -1, 7.5 -1, 7.5 0, 0 0))')
pol2 = shapely.from_wkt('POLYGON ((0 1, 1 0, 2 0.5, 3 0, 4 0, 5 0.5, 6 -0.5, 7 -0.5, 7 1, 0 1))')

To create a GeoSeries, we can pass a list of shapely geometries to the gpd.GeoSeries function. The second (optional) argument passed to gpd.GeoSeries is a crs, specifying the Coordinate Reference System (CRS). In this case, we specify the WGS84 geographical CRS, using its EPSG code 4326 (Table 23):

s = gpd.GeoSeries([pol1, pol2], crs=4326)
s

0    POLYGON ((0 0, 0 -1, 7.5 -1, 7....
1    POLYGON ((0 1, 1 0, 2 0.5, 3 0,...
dtype: geometry

Creating a GeoDataFrame

A GeoDataFrame can be constructed from a dict representing the columns, one of them containing the geometries, and the other(s) containing non-spatial attributes (if any). The dict values may be Series, GeoSeries, or list data structure. First, let us create the dictionary:

d = {'name': ['a', 'b'], 'geometry': s}
d

{'name': ['a', 'b'],
 'geometry': 0    POLYGON ((0 0, 0 -1, 7.5 -1, 7....
 1    POLYGON ((0 1, 1 0, 2 0.5, 3 0,...
 dtype: geometry}

In this particular case, we have:

• the (mandatory) geometry column, conventionally named 'geometry', specified using a GeoSeries (see Creating a GeoSeries), and

• one non-spatial attribute, named 'name', specified using a list

Now, we can convert the dict to a GeoDataFrame, using the gpd.GeoDataFrame function:

gdf = gpd.GeoDataFrame(d)
gdf

	name	geometry
0	a	POLYGON ((0 0, 0 -1, 7.5 -1, 7....
1	b	POLYGON ((0 1, 1 0, 2 0.5, 3 0,...

or in a single step:

gdf = gpd.GeoDataFrame({'name': ['a', 'b'], 'geometry': s})
gdf

	name	geometry
0	a	POLYGON ((0 0, 0 -1, 7.5 -1, 7....
1	b	POLYGON ((0 1, 1 0, 2 0.5, 3 0,...

We can also use a list of geometries instead of a GeoSeries, in which case the crs can be specified inside gpd.GeoDataFrame:

gdf = gpd.GeoDataFrame({'name': ['a', 'b'], 'geometry': [pol1, pol2]}, crs=4326)
gdf

	name	geometry
0	a	POLYGON ((0 0, 0 -1, 7.5 -1, 7....
1	b	POLYGON ((0 1, 1 0, 2 0.5, 3 0,...

Note that, the workflow to create a GeoDataFrame is very similar to the way we created a DataFrame with the pd.DataFrame function (see Creating a DataFrame). Basically, the only difference is the presence of the geometry column.

GeoDataFrame structure

Series columns

Let us examine the structure of the gdf object we just created to understand the structure of a GeoDataFrame.

An individual column of a GeoDataFrame can be accessed just like a column of a DataFrame (see Selecting DataFrame columns). For example, the following expression returns the 'name' column:

gdf['name']

0    a
1    b
Name: name, dtype: object

as a Series object:

type(gdf['name'])

pandas.core.series.Series

More specifically, 'name' is a Series of type object, since it contains strings.

GeoSeries (geometry) column

The following expression returns the 'geometry' column:

gdf['geometry']

0    POLYGON ((0 0, 0 -1, 7.5 -1, 7....
1    POLYGON ((0 1, 1 0, 2 0.5, 3 0,...
Name: geometry, dtype: geometry

However, the recommended approach to access the geometry is through the .geometry property, which refers to the geometry column regardless of its name (whether the name is 'geometry' or not):

gdf.geometry

0    POLYGON ((0 0, 0 -1, 7.5 -1, 7....
1    POLYGON ((0 1, 1 0, 2 0.5, 3 0,...
Name: geometry, dtype: geometry

As mentioned above, the geometry column is a GeoSeries object:

type(gdf.geometry)

geopandas.geoseries.GeoSeries

The 'geometry' column is what differentiates a GeoDataFrame from an ordinary DataFrame.

Note

It is possible for a GeoDataFrame to contain multiple GeoSeries columns. However, only one GeoSeries column at a time can be the “active” geometry column, meaning that it becomes accessible through the .geometry property, participates in spatial calculations, displayed when plotting the layer, etc. To make a given column “active”, we use the .set_geometry method, as in dat=dat.set_geometry('column_name'), where column_name is a name of a GeoSeries column in dat.

Individual geometries

As evident from the way we constructed the object (see Creating a GeoDataFrame), each “cell” in the geometry column is an individual shapely geometry:

gdf.geometry.iloc[0]

gdf.geometry.iloc[1]

If necessary, for instance when applying shapely functions (see Points to line (geopandas)), the entire geometry column can be extracted as a list of shapely geometries using to_list (see Series to list):

gdf.geometry.to_list()

[<POLYGON ((0 0, 0 -1, 7.5 -1, 7.5 0, 0 0))>,
 <POLYGON ((0 1, 1 0, 2 0.5, 3 0, 4 0, 5 0.5, 6 -0.5, 7 -0.5, 7 1, 0 1))>]

GeoDataFrame properties

Geometry types

The geometry types (Fig. 37) of the geometries in a GeoDataFrame or a GeoSeries can be obtained using the .geom_type property. The result is a Series of strings, with the geometry type names. For example:

s.geom_type

0    Polygon
1    Polygon
dtype: object

gdf.geom_type

0    Polygon
1    Polygon
dtype: object

The .geom_type property of geopandas thus serves the same purpose as the .geom_type property of shapely geometries (see Geometry type).

Coordinate Reference System (CRS)

In addition to the geometries, a GeoSeries has a property named .crs, which specifies the Coordinate Regerence System (CRS) of the geometries. For example, the geometries in the gdf layer are in the geographic WGS84 CRS, as specified when creating the layer (see Creating a GeoDataFrame):

gdf.geometry.crs

<Geographic 2D CRS: EPSG:4326>
Name: WGS 84
Axis Info [ellipsoidal]:
- Lat[north]: Geodetic latitude (degree)
- Lon[east]: Geodetic longitude (degree)
Area of Use:
- name: World.
- bounds: (-180.0, -90.0, 180.0, 90.0)
Datum: World Geodetic System 1984 ensemble
- Ellipsoid: WGS 84
- Prime Meridian: Greenwich

The .crs property can also be reached from the GeoDataFrame itself:

gdf.crs

<Geographic 2D CRS: EPSG:4326>
Name: WGS 84
Axis Info [ellipsoidal]:
- Lat[north]: Geodetic latitude (degree)
- Lon[east]: Geodetic longitude (degree)
Area of Use:
- name: World.
- bounds: (-180.0, -90.0, 180.0, 90.0)
Datum: World Geodetic System 1984 ensemble
- Ellipsoid: WGS 84
- Prime Meridian: Greenwich

We are going to elaborate on CRSs and modifying them later on (see CRS and reprojection).

Bounds (geopandas)

The .total_bounds, property of a GeoDataFrame contains the bounding box coordinates of all geometries combined, in the form of a numpy array:

gdf.total_bounds

array([ 0. , -1. ,  7.5,  1. ])

For more detailed information, the .bounds property returns the bounds of each geometry, separately, in a DataFrame:

gdf.bounds

	minx	miny	maxx	maxy
0	0.0	-1.0	7.5	0.0
1	0.0	-0.5	7.0	1.0

In both cases, bounds are returned in the standard form \((x_{min}\), \(y_{min}\), \(x_{max}\), \(y_{max})\), in agreement with the .bounds property of shapely (see Bounds (shapely)).

Reading vector layers

Usually, we read a vector layer from a file, rather than creating it from scratch (see Creating a GeoDataFrame). The gpd.read_file function can read vector layer files in any of the common formats, such as:

• Shapefile (.shp)

• GeoJSON (.geojson)

• GeoPackage (.gpkg)

• File Geodatabase (.gdb)

For example, the following expression reads a Shapefile named 'muni_il.shp' into a GeoDataFrame named towns. This is a polygonal layer of towns in Israel. The additional encoding='utf-8' argument makes the Hebrew text correctly interpreted:

towns = gpd.read_file('data/muni_il.shp', encoding='utf-8')
towns

	Muni_Heb	Muni_Eng	Sug_Muni	CR_PNIM	CR_LAMAS	...	FIRST_Nafa	LAST_Nafa2	Shape_Leng	Shape_Area	geometry
0	שפיר	Shafir	מועצה אזורית	5534	None	...	אשקלון	None	48125.964322	2.721176e+07	POLYGON Z ((177281.694 610056.5...
1	דימונה	Dimona	עירייה	2200	2200	...	באר שבע	None	1102.492262	7.708050e+04	POLYGON Z ((205753.745 560693.6...
2	דימונה	Dimona	עירייה	2200	2200	...	באר שבע	None	7071.568894	1.043253e+06	POLYGON Z ((207740.171 563476.5...
3	זבולון	Zevulun	מועצה אזורית	5512	None	...	חיפה	None	1107.564213	4.769053e+04	POLYGON Z ((209445.229 740507.2...
4	מגידו	Megido	מועצה אזורית	5513	None	...	יזרעאל	None	1076.261429	2.144091e+04	POLYGON Z ((206769.626 727131.7...
...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...
406	ללא שיפוט - אזור מעיליא	No Jurisdiction - Mi'ilya Area	ללא שיפוט	9901	None	...	None	None	2617.936245	2.001376e+05	POLYGON Z ((225369.655 770523.6...
407	זבולון	Zevulun	מועצה אזורית	5512	None	...	חיפה	None	2209.128245	2.246316e+05	POLYGON Z ((207596.214 746263.0...
408	זבולון	Zevulun	מועצה אזורית	5512	None	...	חיפה	None	5507.014575	1.141930e+06	POLYGON Z ((208622.688 746540.1...
409	רמת השרון	Ramat Hasharon	עירייה	2650	2650	...	תל אביב - יפו	None	937.968193	4.076764e+04	POLYGON Z ((183576.756 673627.0...
410	צור הדסה	Tsur Hadasa	מועצה מקומית	1113	1113	...	תל אביב - יפו	None	11292.949932	3.961142e+06	POLYGON Z ((209871.005 625364.9...

411 rows × 14 columns

Let’s read another layer, 'RAIL_STRATEGIC.shp', into a GeoDataFrame named rail. This is a line layer of railway lines in Israel:

rail = gpd.read_file('data/RAIL_STRATEGIC.shp')
rail

	UPGRADE	SHAPE_LENG	SHAPE_Le_1	SEGMENT	ISACTIVE	UPGRAD	geometry
0	שדרוג 2040	14489.400742	12379.715332	כפר יהושע - נשר_1	פעיל	שדרוג בין 2030 ל-2040	LINESTRING (205530.083 741562.9...
1	שדרוג 2030	2159.344166	2274.111800	באר יעקב-ראשונים_2	פעיל	שדרוג עד 2030	LINESTRING (181507.598 650706.1...
2	שדרוג 2040	4942.306156	4942.306156	נתבג - נען_3	לא פעיל	שדרוג בין 2030 ל-2040	LINESTRING (189180.643 645433.4...
3	שדרוג 2040	2829.892202	2793.337699	לב המפרץ מזרח - נשר_4	פעיל	שדרוג בין 2030 ל-2040	LINESTRING (203482.789 744181.5...
4	שדרוג 2040	1976.490872	1960.170882	קרית גת - להבים_5	פעיל	שדרוג בין 2030 ל-2040	LINESTRING (178574.101 609392.9...
...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...
212	חדש 2030	2174.401983	2174.401983	ראש העין צפון - כפר סבא צפון_	לא פעיל	פתיחה עד 2030	LINESTRING (195887.59 675861.96...
213	חדש 2030	0.000000	974.116931	רמלה דרום-ראשונים_218	לא פעיל	פתיחה עד 2030	LINESTRING (183225.361 648648.2...
214	שדרוג 2030	3248.159569	1603.616014	השמונה - בית המכס_220	פעיל	שדרוג עד 2030	LINESTRING (200874.999 746209.3...
215	שדרוג 2030	2611.879099	166.180958	לב המפרץ - בית המכס_221	פעיל	שדרוג עד 2030	LINESTRING (203769.786 744358.6...
216	שדרוג 2030	1302.971893	1284.983680	224_לוד מרכז - נתבג	פעיל	שדרוג עד 2030	LINESTRING (190553.481 654170.3...

217 rows × 7 columns

Note

Note that a Shapefile consists of several files, such as '.shp', '.shx', '.dbf' and '.prj', even though we specify just one the '.shp' file path when reading a Shapefile with gpd.read_file. The same applies to writing a Shapefile (see Writing GeoDataFrame to file).

Plotting (geopandas)

Basic plots

GeoSeries and GeoDataFrame objects have a .plot method, which can be used to visually examine the data we are working with. For example:

gdf.plot();

We can use the color and edgecolor parameters to specify the fill color and border color, respectively:

gdf.plot(color='none', edgecolor='red');

Another useful property is linewidth, to specify line width:

gdf.plot(color='none', linewidth=10);

Let’s also plot the towns and rail layers to see what they look like:

towns.plot();

rail.plot();

Setting symbology

By default, all plotted geometries share the same appearance. However, when plotting a GeoDataFrame, we can set symbology, i.e., geometry appearance corresponding to attribute values. The attribute to use for symbology is specified with the column parameter.

For example, the following expression results in a map where town fill colors correspond to the 'Machoz' attribute values:

towns.plot(column='Machoz');

The color palette for the symbology can be changed using the cmap (“color map’) argument. Valid palette names can be found in the Choosing Colormaps in Matplotlib page of the matplotlib documentation. For example, 'Set2' is one of the “Qualitative colormaps”, which is appropriate for categorical variables:

towns.plot(column='Machoz', cmap='Set2');

As another example, the following expression sets a symbology corresponding to the continuous 'Shape_Area' (polygon area, in \(m^2\)) columns. The argument legend=True adds a legend:

towns.plot(column='Shape_Area', cmap='Reds', legend=True);

Interactive maps

geopandas also provides the .explore method, which facilitates interactive exploration of the vector layers we are working with. The .explore method takes many of the same arguments as .plot (such as column and cmap), but also some specific ones (such as style_kwds). See the documentation for details.

For example, the following expression creates an interactive map displaying the rail layer, colored according to status (active or not). Note that hovering over a feature with the mouse shows a tooltip with the attribute values (similarly to “identify” tools in GIS software).

rail.explore(
    column='ISACTIVE', 
    cmap='RdYlBu', 
    style_kwds={'weight':8, 'opacity':0.8}
)

Make this Notebook Trusted to load map: File -> Trust Notebook

Note

There are several Python packages for creating interactive maps displaying spatial data, either inside a Jupyter notebook or exporting to an HTML document. Most notably, these include folium, ipyleaflet, leafmap, and bokeh. All but the last one are based on the Leaflet web-mapping JavaScript package. The .explore method of geopandas, in fact, uses the folium package and requires it to be installed.

Plotting more than one layer

It is is often helpful to display several layers together in the same plot, one on top of the other. That way, we can see the orientation and alignment of several layers at once.

To display two or more layers in the same geopandas plot, we need to do things a little differently than shown above (see Basic plots):

• Assign a “base” plot, to a variable, such as base

• Display any additional layer(s) on top of the base plot using its .plot method combined with ax=base

For example, here is how we can plot both towns and rail, one on top of the other. Note that we use color='none' for transparent fill of the polygons:

base = towns.plot(color='none', edgecolor='lightgrey')
rail.plot(ax=base, color='blue');

Note

More information on plotting geopandas layers can be found in the Mapping and plotting tools tutorial in the official package documentation.

Selecting GeoDataFrame columns

We can subset columns in a GeoDataFrame the same way as in a DataFrame, using the [[ operator (see Selecting DataFrame columns). The only thing we need to keep in mind is that we must keep the geometry column, so that the result remains a vector layer.

For example, the following expression subsets 5 out of the 14 columns in towns:

towns = towns[['Muni_Heb', 'Muni_Eng', 'Machoz', 'Shape_Area', 'geometry']]
towns

	Muni_Heb	Muni_Eng	Machoz	Shape_Area	geometry
0	שפיר	Shafir	דרום	2.721176e+07	POLYGON Z ((177281.694 610056.5...
1	דימונה	Dimona	דרום	7.708050e+04	POLYGON Z ((205753.745 560693.6...
2	דימונה	Dimona	דרום	1.043253e+06	POLYGON Z ((207740.171 563476.5...
3	זבולון	Zevulun	חיפה	4.769053e+04	POLYGON Z ((209445.229 740507.2...
4	מגידו	Megido	צפון	2.144091e+04	POLYGON Z ((206769.626 727131.7...
...	...	...	...	...	...
406	ללא שיפוט - אזור מעיליא	No Jurisdiction - Mi'ilya Area	צפון	2.001376e+05	POLYGON Z ((225369.655 770523.6...
407	זבולון	Zevulun	חיפה	2.246316e+05	POLYGON Z ((207596.214 746263.0...
408	זבולון	Zevulun	חיפה	1.141930e+06	POLYGON Z ((208622.688 746540.1...
409	רמת השרון	Ramat Hasharon	תל אביב	4.076764e+04	POLYGON Z ((183576.756 673627.0...
410	צור הדסה	Tsur Hadasa	ירושלים	3.961142e+06	POLYGON Z ((209871.005 625364.9...

411 rows × 5 columns

And here we subset three of the columns in rail:

rail = rail[['SEGMENT', 'ISACTIVE', 'geometry']]
rail

	SEGMENT	ISACTIVE	geometry
0	כפר יהושע - נשר_1	פעיל	LINESTRING (205530.083 741562.9...
1	באר יעקב-ראשונים_2	פעיל	LINESTRING (181507.598 650706.1...
2	נתבג - נען_3	לא פעיל	LINESTRING (189180.643 645433.4...
3	לב המפרץ מזרח - נשר_4	פעיל	LINESTRING (203482.789 744181.5...
4	קרית גת - להבים_5	פעיל	LINESTRING (178574.101 609392.9...
...	...	...	...
212	ראש העין צפון - כפר סבא צפון_	לא פעיל	LINESTRING (195887.59 675861.96...
213	רמלה דרום-ראשונים_218	לא פעיל	LINESTRING (183225.361 648648.2...
214	השמונה - בית המכס_220	פעיל	LINESTRING (200874.999 746209.3...
215	לב המפרץ - בית המכס_221	פעיל	LINESTRING (203769.786 744358.6...
216	224_לוד מרכז - נתבג	פעיל	LINESTRING (190553.481 654170.3...

217 rows × 3 columns

Filtering by attributes

We can subset the rows (i.e., features) of a GeoDataFrame using a corresponding boolean Series, the same way we subset rows of a DataFrame (see DataFrame filtering). Typically, the boolean Series is the result of applying a conditional operator on one or more columns of the same GeoDataFrame.

For example, suppose that we want to keep just the active railway segments from the rail layer, namely those segments where the value in the 'ISACTIVE' column is equal to 'פעיל' (“active”). First, we need to create a boolean series where True values reflect the rows we would like to keep. Here, we assign the boolean Series to a variable named sel:

sel = rail['ISACTIVE'] == 'פעיל'
sel

0       True
1       True
2      False
3       True
4       True
       ...  
212    False
213    False
214     True
215     True
216     True
Name: ISACTIVE, Length: 217, dtype: bool

Second, we need to pass the series as an index to the GeoDataFrame. As a result, rail now contains only the active railway lines (161 features out of 217):

rail = rail[sel]
rail

	SEGMENT	ISACTIVE	geometry
0	כפר יהושע - נשר_1	פעיל	LINESTRING (205530.083 741562.9...
1	באר יעקב-ראשונים_2	פעיל	LINESTRING (181507.598 650706.1...
3	לב המפרץ מזרח - נשר_4	פעיל	LINESTRING (203482.789 744181.5...
4	קרית גת - להבים_5	פעיל	LINESTRING (178574.101 609392.9...
5	רמלה - רמלה מזרח_6	פעיל	LINESTRING (189266.58 647211.50...
...	...	...	...
210	ויתקין - חדרה_215	פעיל	LINESTRING (190758.23 704950.04...
211	בית יהושע - נתניה ספיר_216	פעיל	LINESTRING (187526.597 687360.3...
214	השמונה - בית המכס_220	פעיל	LINESTRING (200874.999 746209.3...
215	לב המפרץ - בית המכס_221	פעיל	LINESTRING (203769.786 744358.6...
216	224_לוד מרכז - נתבג	פעיל	LINESTRING (190553.481 654170.3...

161 rows × 3 columns

Once you are more comfortable with the subsetting syntax, you may prefer to do the operation in a single step, as follows:

rail = rail[rail['ISACTIVE'] == 'פעיל']

Let’s plot the filtered rail layer, to see the effect visually:

rail.plot();

Exercise 08-a

• The layer 'statisticalareas_demography2019.gdb' contains demographic data for the statistical areas of Israel, such as population size per age group, in 2019. For example, the column 'age_10_14' contains population counts in the 10-14 age group, while the 'Pop_Total' column contains total population counts (in all age groups). Note that 'statisticalareas_demography2019.gdb' is in a format known as a File Geodatabase.

• Read the 'statisticalareas_demography2019.gdb' layer into a GeoDataFrame.

• Subset the following columns (plus the geometry!):

  • 'YISHUV_STAT11'—Statistical area ID

  • 'SHEM_YISHUV'—Town name in Hebrew

  • 'SHEM_YISHUV_ENGLISH'—Town name in English

  • 'Pop_Total'—Total population size

• What is the Coordinate Reference System of the layer? (answer: 'Israel 1993 / Israeli TM Grid', i.e., ‘ITM’)

• How many features does the layer contain? Write an expression that returns the result as int. (answer: 3195)

• The values in the 'YISHUV_STAT11' column (statistical area ID) should all be unique. How can you make sure? Either use one of the methods we learned earlier, or search online (e.g., google ‘pandas check for duplicates’).

• Plot the layer using the .plot method (Fig. 48).

• Subset just the statistical areas of Beer-Sheva, using either the 'SHEM_YISHUV' or the 'SHEM_YISHUV_ENGLISH' column.

• Plot the resulting subset, using symbology according to total population size, i.e., the 'Pop_Total' column, and using a sequentual color map such as 'Reds' (Fig. 49).

• How many statistical areas are there in Beer-Sheva? (answer: 62)

• What was the total population of Beer-Sheva in 2019? (answer: 209685.0)

Fig. 48 Solution of exercise-08-a1: The statistical areas layer

Fig. 49 Solution of exercise-08-a2: Statistical areas of Beer-Sheva, with symbology according to total population size

Table to point layer

Another very common workflow of creating a vector layer is creating a point layer from a table that has X and Y coordinates in two separate columns. Technically, this means that the X and Y values in each row are transformed into a 'Point' geometry. The geometries are then placed in a geometry column, so that the table becomes a vector layer.

To demonstrate, let’s import the 'stops.txt' table, which contains information about public transport stops in Israel based on GTFS data (see What is GTFS?). Note the columns 'stop_lon' and 'stop_lat', which contain the X and Y coordinates, in the WGS84 coordinate system, i.e., longitude and latitude, respectively:

stops = pd.read_csv('data/gtfs/stops.txt')
stops = stops[['stop_id', 'stop_name', 'stop_lon', 'stop_lat']]
stops

	stop_id	stop_name	stop_lon	stop_lat
0	1	בי''ס בר לב/בן יהודה	34.917554	32.183985
1	2	הרצל/צומת בילו	34.819541	31.870034
2	3	הנחשול/הדייגים	34.782828	31.984553
3	4	משה פריד/יצחק משקה	34.790700	31.888325
4	6	ת. מרכזית לוד/הורדה	34.898098	31.956392
...	...	...	...	...
34002	50182	מסוף שכונת החותרים/הורדה	34.966691	32.748564
34003	50183	מסוף שכונת החותרים/איסוף	34.966844	32.748776
34004	50184	מדבריום	34.744373	31.260857
34005	50185	כביש 25/מדבריום	34.747607	31.263478
34006	50186	כביש 25/מדבריום	34.746768	31.264262

34007 rows × 4 columns

To transform a DataFrame with X and Y columns into a GeoDataFrame point layer, we go through two steps:

• Constructing a GeoSeries of 'Point' geometries, from two Series representing X and Y, using gpd.points_from_xy. Optionally, we can specify the CRS of the GeoSeries, using the crs parameter.

• Converting the GeoSeries to a GeoDataFrame, using gpd.GeoDataFrame.

Let us begin with the first step—creating the GeoSeries. The X and Y columns are readily available, stops['stop_lon'], stops['stop_lat'], however specifying the crs parameter is less trivial. The CRS definition is usually not stored in the same table with the X and Y columns, since it would have to be repeated on all rows. We need to figure out which CRS the X and Y coordinates are in according to the metadata or accompanying information (such as the GTFS specification). In this particular case, the names 'stop_lon' and 'stop_lat' (where “lon”=longitude and “lat”=latitude) give a pretty good hint that the coordinates are given in WGS84, therefore we use crs=4326:

geom = gpd.points_from_xy(stops['stop_lon'], stops['stop_lat'], crs=4326)

The result is a special type of array named GeometryArray:

type(geom)

geopandas.array.GeometryArray

Though it can be used as is, we are going to convert it to a GeoSeries, which we are already familiar with, for clarity:

geom = gpd.GeoSeries(geom)
geom

0        POINT (34.91755 32.18398)
1        POINT (34.81954 31.87003)
2        POINT (34.78283 31.98455)
3         POINT (34.7907 31.88832)
4         POINT (34.8981 31.95639)
                   ...            
34002    POINT (34.96669 32.74856)
34003    POINT (34.96684 32.74878)
34004    POINT (34.74437 31.26086)
34005    POINT (34.74761 31.26348)
34006    POINT (34.74677 31.26426)
Length: 34007, dtype: geometry

Now, we can use the gpd.GeoDataFrame function to combine the DataFrame with the GeoSeries, to get a GeoDataFrame. Instead of passing a dict of columns, like we did when creating a layer manually (see Creating a GeoDataFrame), we pass a DataFrame and a GeoSeries to the data and geometry parameters, respectively:

stops = gpd.GeoDataFrame(data=stops, geometry=geom)
stops

	stop_id	stop_name	stop_lon	stop_lat	geometry
0	1	בי''ס בר לב/בן יהודה	34.917554	32.183985	POINT (34.91755 32.18398)
1	2	הרצל/צומת בילו	34.819541	31.870034	POINT (34.81954 31.87003)
2	3	הנחשול/הדייגים	34.782828	31.984553	POINT (34.78283 31.98455)
3	4	משה פריד/יצחק משקה	34.790700	31.888325	POINT (34.7907 31.88832)
4	6	ת. מרכזית לוד/הורדה	34.898098	31.956392	POINT (34.8981 31.95639)
...	...	...	...	...	...
34002	50182	מסוף שכונת החותרים/הורדה	34.966691	32.748564	POINT (34.96669 32.74856)
34003	50183	מסוף שכונת החותרים/איסוף	34.966844	32.748776	POINT (34.96684 32.74878)
34004	50184	מדבריום	34.744373	31.260857	POINT (34.74437 31.26086)
34005	50185	כביש 25/מדבריום	34.747607	31.263478	POINT (34.74761 31.26348)
34006	50186	כביש 25/מדבריום	34.746768	31.264262	POINT (34.74677 31.26426)

34007 rows × 5 columns

The 'stop_lon' and 'stop_lat' columns are no longer necessary, because the information is already in the 'geometry' columns. Therefore, they can be dropped:

stops = stops.drop(['stop_lon', 'stop_lat'], axis=1)
stops

	stop_id	stop_name	geometry
0	1	בי''ס בר לב/בן יהודה	POINT (34.91755 32.18398)
1	2	הרצל/צומת בילו	POINT (34.81954 31.87003)
2	3	הנחשול/הדייגים	POINT (34.78283 31.98455)
3	4	משה פריד/יצחק משקה	POINT (34.7907 31.88832)
4	6	ת. מרכזית לוד/הורדה	POINT (34.8981 31.95639)
...	...	...	...
34002	50182	מסוף שכונת החותרים/הורדה	POINT (34.96669 32.74856)
34003	50183	מסוף שכונת החותרים/איסוף	POINT (34.96684 32.74878)
34004	50184	מדבריום	POINT (34.74437 31.26086)
34005	50185	כביש 25/מדבריום	POINT (34.74761 31.26348)
34006	50186	כביש 25/מדבריום	POINT (34.74677 31.26426)

34007 rows × 3 columns

Plotting the resulting layer of public transport stations reveals the outline of Israel, with more sparse coverage in the southern part, which corresponds to population density pattern in the country. The markersize argument is used to for smaller point size to reduce overlap:

stops.plot(markersize=1);

Points to line (geopandas)

To lines: all points combined

A common type of geometry transformation, which we already met when learning about shapely, is the transformation of points to lines (see Points to line (shapely)). Let us see how this type of casting can be acheived when our points are in a GeoDataFrame. We begin, in this section, with transforming an entire point layer to a single continuous line. In the next section, we will learn how to transform a point layer to a layer with multiple lines by group (see To lines: by group).

To demonstrate, let’s import the 'shapes.txt' table (see What is GTFS?) from the GTFS dataset. This table contains the shapes of public transport lines. This is quite a big table, with over 7 million rows. In the table, each shape is distinguished by a unique 'shape_id', comprised of lon-lat coordinates in the 'shape_pt_lat', 'shape_pt_lon' columns:

shapes = pd.read_csv('data/gtfs/shapes.txt')
shapes

	shape_id	shape_pt_lat	shape_pt_lon	shape_pt_sequence
0	69895	32.164723	34.848813	1
1	69895	32.164738	34.848972	2
2	69895	32.164771	34.849177	3
3	69895	32.164841	34.849429	4
4	69895	32.164889	34.849626	5
...	...	...	...	...
7546509	146260	32.084831	34.796385	953
7546510	146260	32.084884	34.796040	954
7546511	146260	32.084908	34.795895	955
7546512	146260	32.084039	34.795698	956
7546513	146260	32.083737	34.795645	957

7546514 rows × 4 columns

For the first example, we take a subset of shapes containing the shape of just one transit line. We will select the 136236 value of 'shape_id', which corresponds to bus line 24 in Beer-Sheva going from Ramot to Beer-Sheva Central Bus Station (see Solution of exercise-07-i: bus trip points). This results in a much smaller table, with 861 rows:

pnt = shapes[shapes['shape_id'] == 136236]
pnt

	shape_id	shape_pt_lat	shape_pt_lon	shape_pt_sequence
2396423	136236	31.242009	34.797979	1
2396424	136236	31.242103	34.797988	2
2396425	136236	31.242829	34.797982	3
2396426	136236	31.242980	34.797986	4
2396427	136236	31.243121	34.798000	5
...	...	...	...	...
2397279	136236	31.280183	34.822166	857
2397280	136236	31.280225	34.822116	858
2397281	136236	31.280246	34.822038	859
2397282	136236	31.280250	34.821949	860
2397283	136236	31.280233	34.821860	861

861 rows × 4 columns

What we have is a DataFrame with x-y coordinate columns, 'shape_pt_lon' and 'shape_pt_lat'. We already know how to transform it to a GeoDataFrame with point geometries (see Table to point layer):

geom = gpd.points_from_xy(pnt['shape_pt_lon'], pnt['shape_pt_lat'], crs=4326)
pnt = gpd.GeoDataFrame(data=pnt, geometry=geom)
pnt = pnt.drop(['shape_pt_lon', 'shape_pt_lat'], axis=1)
pnt

	shape_id	shape_pt_sequence	geometry
2396423	136236	1	POINT (34.79798 31.24201)
2396424	136236	2	POINT (34.79799 31.2421)
2396425	136236	3	POINT (34.79798 31.24283)
2396426	136236	4	POINT (34.79799 31.24298)
2396427	136236	5	POINT (34.798 31.24312)
...	...	...	...
2397279	136236	857	POINT (34.82217 31.28018)
2397280	136236	858	POINT (34.82212 31.28022)
2397281	136236	859	POINT (34.82204 31.28025)
2397282	136236	860	POINT (34.82195 31.28025)
2397283	136236	861	POINT (34.82186 31.28023)

861 rows × 3 columns

Now, we are going use shapely to transform the point geometries into a single 'LineString' geometry. First, we create a list of shapely geometries, which requires selecting the GeoSeries (geometry) column and converting it to a list using the .to_list method (see Individual geometries):

x = pnt.geometry.to_list()
x[:5]

[<POINT (34.798 31.242)>,
 <POINT (34.798 31.242)>,
 <POINT (34.798 31.243)>,
 <POINT (34.798 31.243)>,
 <POINT (34.798 31.243)>]

Then, we use the shapely.LineString function (see Points to line (shapely)) to convert the list of 'Point' geometries to a single 'LineString' geometry, as follows:

line = shapely.LineString(x)
line

In case we need the geometry to be contained in a GeoDataFrame, rather than a standalone shapely geometry, we can construct a GeoDataFrame using the methods we learned in the beginning of this chapter (see Creating a GeoDataFrame):

line1 = gpd.GeoDataFrame({'geometry': [line]}, crs=4326)
line1

	geometry
0	LINESTRING (34.79798 31.24201, ...

Here is an interactive map of the resulting layer line1:

line1.explore(color='red', style_kwds={'weight':8, 'opacity':0.8})

Make this Notebook Trusted to load map: File -> Trust Notebook

To lines: by group

In the next example, we demonstrate how the conversion of points to lines can be generalized to produce multiple lines at once, in case when there is a grouping variable specifying the division of points to groups. For example, using the GTFS data, we may want to create a layer of type 'LineString', with all different bus routes together, rather than just one specific route (see To lines: all points combined). This example is relatively complex, with many steps to get the data into the right shape.

Our first step is to read four tables from the GTFS dataset, namely agency, routes, trips, and shapes, keeping just the columns that we need:

agency = pd.read_csv('data/gtfs/agency.txt', usecols=['agency_id', 'agency_name'])
routes = pd.read_csv('data/gtfs/routes.txt', usecols=['route_id', 'agency_id', 'route_short_name', 'route_long_name'])
trips = pd.read_csv('data/gtfs/trips.txt', usecols=['trip_id', 'route_id', 'shape_id'])
shapes = pd.read_csv('data/gtfs/shapes.txt', usecols=['shape_id', 'shape_pt_sequence', 'shape_pt_lon', 'shape_pt_lat'])

To have a more manageable layer size, we will subset just one bus operator, namely 'מטרופולין'. First, we need to figure out its agency_id:

agency = agency[agency['agency_name'] == 'מטרופולין']
agency

	agency_id	agency_name
9	15	מטרופולין

Now that we know the agency_id of 'מטרופולין', we can subset the routes table to retain only the routes by this particular operator. We also drop the 'agency_id' column which is no longer necessary. We can see there are 691 routes operated by 'מטרופולין':

routes = routes[routes['agency_id'] == agency['agency_id'].iloc[0]]
routes = routes.drop('agency_id', axis=1)
routes

	route_id	route_short_name	route_long_name
211	696	600	ת. מרכזית נתניה/רציפים-נתניה<->...
212	697	600	ת.מרכזית תל אביב קומה 6/רציפים-...
213	698	601	ת. רכבת נתניה-נתניה<->ת.מרכזית ...
214	700	601	ת.מרכזית תל אביב קומה 6/רציפים-...
215	707	604	ת. מרכזית נתניה/רציפים-נתניה<->...
...	...	...	...
7960	36003	457	יצחק שדה/האצל-דימונה<->ירמיהו/א...
8054	36477	178	מסוף עתידים-תל אביב יפו<->המרכב...
8055	36478	178	המרכבה/הבנאי-חולון<->מסוף עתידי...
8062	36503	13	בית ברבור/דרך ההגנה-תל אביב יפו...
8063	36504	13	בי''ח וולפסון-חולון<->בית ברבור...

691 rows × 3 columns

Next, we need to join the routes table with the shapes table, where the route coordinates are. However the routes table corresponds to the shapes table indirectly, through the trips table (Fig. 28). Therefore we first need to join trips to routes, and then shapes to the result. To make things simpler, we will remove duplicates from the trips table, assuming that all trips of a particular route follow the same shape (which they typically do), thus retaining just one representative trip per route. Here is the current state of the trips table, with numerous trips per route:

trips

	route_id	trip_id	shape_id
0	60	3764_081023	126055.0
1	68	3143332_011023	128020.0
2	68	3143338_011023	128020.0
3	68	3244955_011023	128020.0
4	68	3244956_011023	128020.0
...	...	...	...
398086	43	2827_081023	127560.0
398087	43	17254928_011023	127560.0
398088	43	2796_011023	127560.0
398089	43	2806_011023	127560.0
398090	43	2807_011023	127560.0

398091 rows × 3 columns

To remove duplicates from a table, we can use the .drop_duplicates method. This method accepts an argument named subset, where we specify which column(s) are considered for duplicates. In our case, we remove rows with duplicated route_id in trips, thus retaining just one route_id per trip:

trips = trips.drop_duplicates(subset='route_id')
trips

	route_id	trip_id	shape_id
0	60	3764_081023	126055.0
1	68	3143332_011023	128020.0
10	69	42263035_081023	128021.0
20	70	4667527_081023	133676.0
28	81	17255283_081023	140323.0
...	...	...	...
394653	16001	57730596_091023	135279.0
394750	17800	584950698_011023	120468.0
395305	35432	585244118_071023	139876.0
395741	21093	28981390_071023	139766.0
397299	16331	28394213_011023	142903.0

8188 rows × 3 columns

We can also drop the trip_id column, which is no longer necessary:

trips = trips.drop('trip_id', axis=1)
trips

	route_id	shape_id
0	60	126055.0
1	68	128020.0
10	69	128021.0
20	70	133676.0
28	81	140323.0
...	...	...
394653	16001	135279.0
394750	17800	120468.0
395305	35432	139876.0
395741	21093	139766.0
397299	16331	142903.0

8188 rows × 2 columns

Now we can run both joins:

• first joining trips to routes, to attach the shape IDs,

• then shapes to the result, to attach the lon/lat point sequences

as follows:

routes = pd.merge(routes, trips, on='route_id', how='left')
routes

	route_id	route_short_name	route_long_name	shape_id
0	696	600	ת. מרכזית נתניה/רציפים-נתניה<->...	138815.0
1	697	600	ת.מרכזית תל אביב קומה 6/רציפים-...	132223.0
2	698	601	ת. רכבת נתניה-נתניה<->ת.מרכזית ...	138816.0
3	700	601	ת.מרכזית תל אביב קומה 6/רציפים-...	145630.0
4	707	604	ת. מרכזית נתניה/רציפים-נתניה<->...	138656.0
...	...	...	...	...
686	36003	457	יצחק שדה/האצל-דימונה<->ירמיהו/א...	143525.0
687	36477	178	מסוף עתידים-תל אביב יפו<->המרכב...	145131.0
688	36478	178	המרכבה/הבנאי-חולון<->מסוף עתידי...	145132.0
689	36503	13	בית ברבור/דרך ההגנה-תל אביב יפו...	144796.0
690	36504	13	בי''ח וולפסון-חולון<->בית ברבור...	144797.0

691 rows × 4 columns

routes = pd.merge(routes, shapes, on='shape_id', how='left')
routes

	route_id	route_short_name	route_long_name	shape_id	shape_pt_lat	shape_pt_lon	shape_pt_sequence
0	696	600	ת. מרכזית נתניה/רציפים-נתניה<->...	138815.0	32.326945	34.858709	1
1	696	600	ת. מרכזית נתניה/רציפים-נתניה<->...	138815.0	32.326788	34.859270	2
2	696	600	ת. מרכזית נתניה/רציפים-נתניה<->...	138815.0	32.326743	34.859413	3
3	696	600	ת. מרכזית נתניה/רציפים-נתניה<->...	138815.0	32.326359	34.859245	4
4	696	600	ת. מרכזית נתניה/רציפים-נתניה<->...	138815.0	32.326587	34.858540	5
...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...
670119	36504	13	בי''ח וולפסון-חולון<->בית ברבור...	144797.0	32.053639	34.802566	829
670120	36504	13	בי''ח וולפסון-חולון<->בית ברבור...	144797.0	32.053632	34.802569	830
670121	36504	13	בי''ח וולפסון-חולון<->בית ברבור...	144797.0	32.053539	34.802274	831
670122	36504	13	בי''ח וולפסון-חולון<->בית ברבור...	144797.0	32.053421	34.801801	832
670123	36504	13	בי''ח וולפסון-חולון<->בית ברבור...	144797.0	32.053396	34.801617	833

670124 rows × 7 columns

The resulting routes table contains, in the 'shape_pt_lon' and 'shape_pt_lat' columns, the coordinate sequence per 'route_id'. Now, we can move on to the spatial part of the conversion, where the table will be transformed to a 'LineString' layer of routes.

First, we convert the DataFrame to a GeoDataFrame of type 'Point', same as we did above for the individual line number 24 in Beer-Sheva (see To lines: all points combined):

geom = gpd.points_from_xy(routes['shape_pt_lon'], routes['shape_pt_lat'], crs=4326)
routes = gpd.GeoDataFrame(data=routes, geometry=geom)
routes = routes.drop(['shape_pt_lon', 'shape_pt_lat'], axis=1)
routes

	route_id	route_short_name	route_long_name	shape_id	shape_pt_sequence	geometry
0	696	600	ת. מרכזית נתניה/רציפים-נתניה<->...	138815.0	1	POINT (34.85871 32.32694)
1	696	600	ת. מרכזית נתניה/רציפים-נתניה<->...	138815.0	2	POINT (34.85927 32.32679)
2	696	600	ת. מרכזית נתניה/רציפים-נתניה<->...	138815.0	3	POINT (34.85941 32.32674)
3	696	600	ת. מרכזית נתניה/רציפים-נתניה<->...	138815.0	4	POINT (34.85924 32.32636)
4	696	600	ת. מרכזית נתניה/רציפים-נתניה<->...	138815.0	5	POINT (34.85854 32.32659)
...	...	...	...	...	...	...
670119	36504	13	בי''ח וולפסון-חולון<->בית ברבור...	144797.0	829	POINT (34.80257 32.05364)
670120	36504	13	בי''ח וולפסון-חולון<->בית ברבור...	144797.0	830	POINT (34.80257 32.05363)
670121	36504	13	בי''ח וולפסון-חולון<->בית ברבור...	144797.0	831	POINT (34.80227 32.05354)
670122	36504	13	בי''ח וולפסון-חולון<->בית ברבור...	144797.0	832	POINT (34.8018 32.05342)
670123	36504	13	בי''ח וולפסון-חולון<->בית ברבור...	144797.0	833	POINT (34.80162 32.0534)

670124 rows × 6 columns

If we needed to convert all sequences into a single 'LineString', we could use the method shown earlier (see To lines: all points combined). However, what we need is to create a separate 'LineString' per 'route_id'. Therefore, we:

• Group the layer by 'shape_id', using the .agg method (see Different functions (agg))

• Use the 'first' “function” to keep the first 'route_short_name' and 'route_long_name' values per route (as they are identical in each 'route_id' anyway)

• Apply a lambda function (see Custom functions (agg)) that “summarizes” the 'Point' geometries into a 'LineString' geometry

Here is the code:

routes = routes.groupby('route_id').agg({
    'route_short_name': 'first',
    'route_long_name': 'first',
    'geometry': lambda x: shapely.LineString(x.to_list()),
}).reset_index()
routes

	route_id	route_short_name	route_long_name	geometry
0	696	600	ת. מרכזית נתניה/רציפים-נתניה<->...	LINESTRING (34.85871 32.32694, ...
1	697	600	ת.מרכזית תל אביב קומה 6/רציפים-...	LINESTRING (34.7784 32.05604, 3...
2	698	601	ת. רכבת נתניה-נתניה<->ת.מרכזית ...	LINESTRING (34.86808 32.31997, ...
3	700	601	ת.מרכזית תל אביב קומה 6/רציפים-...	LINESTRING (34.77911 32.05585, ...
4	707	604	ת. מרכזית נתניה/רציפים-נתניה<->...	LINESTRING (34.85871 32.32694, ...
...	...	...	...	...
686	36003	457	יצחק שדה/האצל-דימונה<->ירמיהו/א...	LINESTRING (35.02688 31.07337, ...
687	36477	178	מסוף עתידים-תל אביב יפו<->המרכב...	LINESTRING (34.84134 32.11417, ...
688	36478	178	המרכבה/הבנאי-חולון<->מסוף עתידי...	LINESTRING (34.8067 32.01673, 3...
689	36503	13	בית ברבור/דרך ההגנה-תל אביב יפו...	LINESTRING (34.80169 32.0534, 3...
690	36504	13	בי''ח וולפסון-חולון<->בית ברבור...	LINESTRING (34.76128 32.0366, 3...

691 rows × 4 columns

The .groupby and .agg workflow unfortunately “loses” the spatial properties of the data structure, going back to a DataFrame:

type(routes)

pandas.core.frame.DataFrame

Therefore, we need to convert the result back to a GeoDataFrame and restore the CRS information which was lost, using gpd.GeoDataFrame:

routes = gpd.GeoDataFrame(routes, crs=4326)
routes

	route_id	route_short_name	route_long_name	geometry
0	696	600	ת. מרכזית נתניה/רציפים-נתניה<->...	LINESTRING (34.85871 32.32694, ...
1	697	600	ת.מרכזית תל אביב קומה 6/רציפים-...	LINESTRING (34.7784 32.05604, 3...
2	698	601	ת. רכבת נתניה-נתניה<->ת.מרכזית ...	LINESTRING (34.86808 32.31997, ...
3	700	601	ת.מרכזית תל אביב קומה 6/רציפים-...	LINESTRING (34.77911 32.05585, ...
4	707	604	ת. מרכזית נתניה/רציפים-נתניה<->...	LINESTRING (34.85871 32.32694, ...
...	...	...	...	...
686	36003	457	יצחק שדה/האצל-דימונה<->ירמיהו/א...	LINESTRING (35.02688 31.07337, ...
687	36477	178	מסוף עתידים-תל אביב יפו<->המרכב...	LINESTRING (34.84134 32.11417, ...
688	36478	178	המרכבה/הבנאי-חולון<->מסוף עתידי...	LINESTRING (34.8067 32.01673, 3...
689	36503	13	בית ברבור/דרך ההגנה-תל אביב יפו...	LINESTRING (34.80169 32.0534, 3...
690	36504	13	בי''ח וולפסון-חולון<->בית ברבור...	LINESTRING (34.76128 32.0366, 3...

691 rows × 4 columns

type(routes)

geopandas.geodataframe.GeoDataFrame

Here is a map of the result. This is a line layer of all 691 routes operated by 'מטרופולין', reflecting the shape of the first representative trip per route:

routes.explore(color='red', style_kwds={'weight':8, 'opacity':0.1})

Make this Notebook Trusted to load map: File -> Trust Notebook

Exercise 08-b

• Repeat the creation of the line layer routes, as shown above, but this time subset the operator 'דן באר שבע'.

• Calcualte a GeoSeries of starting points of each route. Hint: you can either go over the 'LineString' geometries and extract the first point using shapely methods (see LineString coordinates and shapely from type-specific functions), or go back to the point layer and subset the first point per route_id.

• Plot the routes and the start points together (Fig. 50).

• Note that the default plotting order of matplotlib is lines on top of points. To have points on top of lines, specify:

  • zorder=1 when plotting the lines, and

  • zorder=2 when plotting the points.

Fig. 50 Solution of exercise-08-b: Routes operated by 'דן באר שבע' and their start points

We can also explore specific routes in more detail. For example, the following expression displays bus lines '367', '368', and '370', which travel between Beer-Sheva, and Rishon Le Zion ('367'), Ashdod ('368'), and Tel-Aviv ('370'). Note that we are using the .isin method (see Using .isin) for filtering:

routes1 = routes[routes['route_short_name'].isin(['367', '368', '370'])]
routes1

	route_id	route_short_name	route_long_name	geometry
180	8140	367	ת. מרכזית רשל''צ/רציפים-ראשון ל...	LINESTRING (34.78558 31.96781, ...
181	8141	367	ת.מרכזית באר שבע/רציפים בינעירו...	LINESTRING (34.79679 31.24297, ...
182	8145	368	ת. מרכזית אשדוד/רציפים-אשדוד<->...	LINESTRING (34.63898 31.79091, ...
183	8148	368	ת.מרכזית באר שבע/רציפים בינעירו...	LINESTRING (34.79679 31.24297, ...
190	8170	370	ת.מרכזית תל אביב קומה 6/רציפים-...	LINESTRING (34.77911 32.05585, ...
191	8171	370	ת.מרכזית באר שבע/רציפים בינעירו...	LINESTRING (34.79679 31.24297, ...

Typically, there are two routes for each line, one route per direction, labelled 1# and 2#, which is why we got six routes for three lines:

routes1['route_long_name'].to_list()

["ת. מרכזית רשל''צ/רציפים-ראשון לציון<->ת.מרכזית באר שבע/הורדה-באר שבע-1#",
 "ת.מרכזית באר שבע/רציפים בינעירוני-באר שבע<->ת. מרכזית ראשל''צ-ראשון לציון-2#",
 'ת. מרכזית אשדוד/רציפים-אשדוד<->ת.מרכזית באר שבע/הורדה-באר שבע-1#',
 'ת.מרכזית באר שבע/רציפים בינעירוני-באר שבע<->ת. מרכזית אשדוד-אשדוד-2#',
 'ת.מרכזית תל אביב קומה 6/רציפים-תל אביב יפו<->ת.מרכזית באר שבע/הורדה-באר שבע-1#',
 'ת.מרכזית באר שבע/רציפים בינעירוני-באר שבע<->ת.מרכזית תל אביב קומה 6/הורדה-תל אביב יפו-2#']

When mapping the lines we can keep just one, since the routes of the same line in both directions mostly overlap anyway:

routes1 = routes1.drop_duplicates('route_short_name')
routes1

	route_id	route_short_name	route_long_name	geometry
180	8140	367	ת. מרכזית רשל''צ/רציפים-ראשון ל...	LINESTRING (34.78558 31.96781, ...
182	8145	368	ת. מרכזית אשדוד/רציפים-אשדוד<->...	LINESTRING (34.63898 31.79091, ...
190	8170	370	ת.מרכזית תל אביב קומה 6/רציפים-...	LINESTRING (34.77911 32.05585, ...

Here is an interactive map of the three lines. Here we use another option for specifying cmap, using specific color names (which is specific to .explore):

routes1.explore(
    column='route_short_name', 
    cmap=['red', 'green', 'blue'], 
    style_kwds={'weight':8, 'opacity':0.8}
)

Make this Notebook Trusted to load map: File -> Trust Notebook

Writing GeoDataFrame to file

A GeoDataFrame can be written to file using its .to_file method. This is useful for:

• Permanent storage of the data, for future analysis or for sharing your results with other people

• Examining the result in other software, such as GIS software, for validation or exploration of your results

The output format of .to_file can be inferred from the file extension, e.g., Shapefile when writing to a .shp file. For example, the following expression writes the routes line layer (see To lines: by group) into a Shapefile named routes.shp in the output directory. When exporting a Shapefile with non-English text, we sould also specify the encoding, such as encoding='utf-8':

routes.to_file('output/routes.shp', encoding='utf-8')

/tmp/ipykernel_1087383/666508242.py:1: UserWarning: Column names longer than 10 characters will be truncated when saved to ESRI Shapefile.
  routes.to_file('output/routes.shp', encoding='utf-8')
/home/michael/Sync/venv/m/lib/python3.12/site-packages/pyogrio/raw.py:723: RuntimeWarning: Normalized/laundered field name: 'route_short_name' to 'route_shor'
  ogr_write(
/home/michael/Sync/venv/m/lib/python3.12/site-packages/pyogrio/raw.py:723: RuntimeWarning: Normalized/laundered field name: 'route_long_name' to 'route_long'
  ogr_write(

Now we can permanently store the layer of bus routes, share it with a colleague, or open it in another program such as QGIS (Fig. 51).

Fig. 51 The routes layer, exported to Shapefile and opened in QGIS

We can write to GeoJSON or GeoPackage files the same way:

routes.to_file('output/routes.geojson')
routes.to_file('output/routes.gpkg')

Note that if the output file already exists—it will be overwritten!

More exercises

Exercise 08-c

• In this exercise, you need to use the statistical areas layer ('statisticalareas_demography2019.gdb') to find out which towns have the highest, or lowest, proportions of young (0-19) residents. To do that, go through the following steps.

• Read the statistical areas layer ('statisticalareas_demography2019.gdb').

• Subset the columns 'SHEM_YISHUV', 'age_0_4', 'age_5_9', 'age_10_14', 'age_15_19', and 'Pop_Total'. Note that the result is a DataFrame, since the geometry column was not included.

• Replace the “No Data” values in the 'age_0_4', 'age_5_9', 'age_10_14', 'age_15_19', and 'Pop_Total' columns with zero (as these represent zero population).

• Sum the 'age_0_4', 'age_5_9', 'age_10_14', and 'age_15_19' columns to calculate a new column named 'Pop_Total_0_19', which represents the total population in ages 0-19 per polygon.

• Subset only those towns with 'Pop_Total' greater than 5000.

• Aggregate by town name ('SHEM_YISHUV' column), while calculating the sum of the 'Pop_Total_0_19' and the 'Pop_Total' columns.

• Calculate the proportion of the “young” population, by dividing the 'Pop_Total_0_19' column by the 'Pop_Total' column, and store it in a new column named 'prop'.

• Reclassify the 'prop' values into two categories:

  • 'young'—Where the 'prop' is above the average of the entire 'prop' column.

  • 'old'—Where the 'prop' is below the average of the entire 'prop' column.

• Print the five towns with the highest and lowest 'prop' values (Fig. 52).

	SHEM_YISHUV	age_0_4	age_5_9	age_10_14	age_15_19	Pop_Total	Pop_Total_0_19	prop	type
149	קריית ביאליק	696.0	646.0	634.0	635.0	10980.0	2611.0	0.237796	old
118	נשר	459.0	491.0	446.0	403.0	7123.0	1799.0	0.252562	old
32	בני עי"ש	518.0	460.0	389.0	424.0	6978.0	1791.0	0.256664	old
164	רמת גן	4106.0	3764.0	3511.0	3077.0	53747.0	14458.0	0.269001	old
176	תל אביב -יפו	7217.0	6461.0	5473.0	4941.0	89404.0	24092.0	0.269473	old
...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...	...
63	חורה	4087.0	3553.0	3001.0	2799.0	22337.0	13440.0	0.601692	young
29	בית שמש	18999.0	17515.0	14383.0	9976.0	100881.0	60873.0	0.603414	young
10	אלעד	7271.0	8064.0	8142.0	6457.0	48764.0	29934.0	0.613854	young
30	ביתר עילית	9963.0	8915.0	7437.0	4291.0	46889.0	30606.0	0.652733	young
105	מודיעין עילית	14246.0	13303.0	9782.0	5517.0	62919.0	42848.0	0.681003	young

179 rows × 9 columns

Fig. 52 Solution of exercise-08-c: Towns with the highest and lowest proportions of young (0-19) residents

Exercise 08-d

• Start with the routes layer with all routes operated by "מטרופולין" (see To lines: by group).

• Calculate delta_lon and delta_lat columns, with \(x_{max}-x_{min}\) and \(y_{max}-y_{min}\) per route, respectively. Hint: use the .bounds property (see Bounds (geopandas)).

• Subset the route that has maximal delta_lon and the route that has the maximal delta_lat, i.e., the route that has the widest and the tallest bounding box, respectively (Fig. 53).

• Plot the two routes using different colors (Fig. 54).

	route_id	route_short_name	route_long_name	geometry
279	11698	588	ת. מרכזית ערד/רציפים-ערד<->מכלל...	LINESTRING (35.21177 31.25577, ...
292	11718	660	הספרייה-מצפה רמון<->ת.מרכזית תל...	LINESTRING (34.80194 30.61039, ...

Fig. 53 Solution of exercise-08-d1: Routes by "מטרופולין" with maximal delta_lon and delta_lat (table view)

Fig. 54 Solution of exercise-08-d2: Routes by "מטרופולין" with maximal delta_lon and delta_lat (plot)

Exercise solutions

Exercise 08-a

import geopandas as gpd
# Read and subset
stat = gpd.read_file('data/statisticalareas_demography2019.gdb')
stat = stat[['YISHUV_STAT11', 'SHEM_YISHUV', 'SHEM_YISHUV_ENGLISH', 'Pop_Total', 'geometry']]
# Examine CRS
stat.crs
# Feature count
stat.shape[0]
# Are there any duplicates in the 'YISHUV_STAT11' column?
stat['YISHUV_STAT11'].duplicated().any()
# Plot
stat.plot(edgecolor='black', color='none');

# Subset 'Beer-Sheva'
sel = stat['SHEM_YISHUV'] == 'באר שבע'
stat1 = stat[sel]
# Plot
stat1.plot(column='Pop_Total', edgecolor='black', cmap='Reds', legend=True);

# Feature count
stat1.shape[0]

# Sum of population
stat1['Pop_Total'].sum()

Exercise 08-b

import pandas as pd
import geopandas as gpd
import shapely
# Read
agency = pd.read_csv('data/gtfs/agency.txt')
routes = pd.read_csv('data/gtfs/routes.txt')
trips = pd.read_csv('data/gtfs/trips.txt')
shapes = pd.read_csv('data/gtfs/shapes.txt')
# Subset
agency = agency[['agency_id', 'agency_name']]
routes = routes[['route_id', 'agency_id', 'route_short_name', 'route_long_name']]
trips = trips[['trip_id', 'route_id', 'shape_id']]
shapes = shapes[['shape_id', 'shape_pt_sequence', 'shape_pt_lon', 'shape_pt_lat']]
# Subset agency
agency = agency[agency['agency_name'] == 'דן באר שבע']
routes = routes[routes['agency_id'] == agency['agency_id'].iloc[0]]
routes = routes.drop('agency_id', axis=1)
# Drop duplicate trips
trips = trips.drop_duplicates(subset='route_id')
trips = trips.drop('trip_id', axis=1)
# Join routes with shapes
routes = pd.merge(routes, trips, on='route_id', how='left')
routes = pd.merge(routes, shapes, on='shape_id', how='left')
# To points
geom = gpd.points_from_xy(routes['shape_pt_lon'], routes['shape_pt_lat'], crs=4326)
routes = gpd.GeoDataFrame(data=routes, geometry=geom)
routes = routes.drop(['shape_pt_lon', 'shape_pt_lat'], axis=1)
# To lines
routes = routes.groupby('route_id').agg({
    'route_short_name': 'first',
    'route_long_name': 'first',
    'geometry': lambda x: shapely.LineString(x.to_list()),
}).reset_index()
routes = gpd.GeoDataFrame(routes, crs=4326)
# Calculate start points
pnt = [shapely.Point(line.coords[0]) for line in routes['geometry'].to_list()]
pnt = gpd.GeoSeries(pnt, crs=4326)
# Plot
base = routes.plot(zorder=1)
pnt.plot(ax=base, color='red', zorder=2);

Exercise 08-c

import geopandas as gpd
# Read
stat = gpd.read_file('data/statisticalareas_demography2019.gdb')
# Subset columns
sel = ['SHEM_YISHUV', 'age_0_4', 'age_5_9', 'age_10_14', 'age_15_19', 'Pop_Total']
stat = stat[sel]
# Replace 'No Data' with zero
sel = ['age_0_4', 'age_5_9', 'age_10_14', 'age_15_19', 'Pop_Total']
stat[sel] = stat[sel].fillna(0)
# Subset towns with total population >5000
sel = stat['Pop_Total'] > 5000
stat = stat[sel].copy()
# Calculate total population in ages 0-19
stat['Pop_Total_0_19'] = stat['age_0_4'] + stat['age_5_9'] + stat['age_10_14'] + stat['age_15_19']
# Aggregate
stat = stat.groupby('SHEM_YISHUV').sum().reset_index()
stat
# Calculate ratio
stat['prop'] = stat['Pop_Total_0_19'] / stat['Pop_Total']
stat
# Classify and sort
stat['type'] = 'old'
sel = stat['prop'] >= stat['prop'].mean()
stat.loc[sel, 'type'] = 'young'
stat = stat.sort_values(by='prop')
stat

Exercise 08-d

import pandas as pd
import geopandas as gpd
import shapely
# Read
agency = pd.read_csv('data/gtfs/agency.txt')
routes = pd.read_csv('data/gtfs/routes.txt')
trips = pd.read_csv('data/gtfs/trips.txt')
shapes = pd.read_csv('data/gtfs/shapes.txt')
# Subset
agency = agency[['agency_id', 'agency_name']]
routes = routes[['route_id', 'agency_id', 'route_short_name', 'route_long_name']]
trips = trips[['trip_id', 'route_id', 'shape_id']]
shapes = shapes[['shape_id', 'shape_pt_sequence', 'shape_pt_lon', 'shape_pt_lat']]
# Subset agency
agency = agency[agency['agency_name'] == 'מטרופולין']
routes = routes[routes['agency_id'] == agency['agency_id'].iloc[0]]
routes = routes.drop('agency_id', axis=1)
# Drop duplicate trips
trips = trips.drop_duplicates(subset='route_id')
trips = trips.drop('trip_id', axis=1)
# Join routes with shapes
routes = pd.merge(routes, trips, on='route_id', how='left')
routes = pd.merge(routes, shapes, on='shape_id', how='left')
# To points
geom = gpd.points_from_xy(routes['shape_pt_lon'], routes['shape_pt_lat'], crs=4326)
routes = gpd.GeoDataFrame(data=routes, geometry=geom)
routes = routes.drop(['shape_pt_lon', 'shape_pt_lat'], axis=1)
# To lines
routes = routes.groupby('route_id').agg({
    'route_short_name': 'first',
    'route_long_name': 'first',
    'geometry': lambda x: shapely.LineString(x.to_list()),
}).reset_index()
routes = gpd.GeoDataFrame(routes, crs=4326)
# Calculate 'delta_lon' and 'delta_lat'
b = routes.bounds
delta_lon = b['maxx'] - b['minx']
delta_lat = b['maxy'] - b['miny']
# Subset maximum 'delta_lon' and 'delta_lat'
routes1 = routes.iloc[[delta_lon.idxmax(), delta_lat.idxmax()], :]
routes1

routes1.plot(column='route_short_name', legend=True, cmap='Set1');