Chaowei Yang is professor of geographic information science at George Mason University (GMU). His research interest is on utilizing spatiotemporal principles to optimize computing infrastructure to support science discoveries. He founded the Center for Intelligent Spatial Computing and the NSF Spatiotemporal Innovation Center. He served as PI or Co-I for projects totaling over [...]M and funded by over 15 agencies, organizations, and companies. He has published 150+ articles and developed a number of GIS courses and a training program. He has graduated 20+ postdoctoral and PhD students who serve as professors and scientists in highly acclaimed U.S. and Chinese institutions. He received many national and international awards, such as the U.S. Presidential Environment Protection Stewardship Award in 2009. All his achievements are based on his practical knowledge of GIS and geospatial information systems. This book is a collection of such practical knowledge on how to develop GIS tools from a programming perspective. The content was offered in his programming and GIS algorithm classes during the past 10 years (2004-2016) and has been adopted by his students and colleagues serving as professors at many universities in the United States and internationally.

Section I. Introduction. Object-Oriented Programming. Section II. Introduction to Python. Python Language Control Structure, File Input/Output, and Exception Handling. Programming Thinking and Vector Data Visualization. Shapefile Handling. Python Programming Environment. Vector Data Algorithms. Section III. ArcGIS Programming. Raster Data Algorithm. Network Data Algorithms. Surface Data Algorithms. Section IV. Performance-Improving Techniques. Advanced Topics. References. Index.