Part 3: GIS and Spatial Analysis

The practical toolkit of overlays, rasters, terrain logic, and computational geography.

Textbook Part

GIS and Spatial Analysis

This part is where the book becomes recognisably GIS and spatial computation. It asks how locations become data, how vector and raster operations work, and how those operations become real analytical workflows.

Start Part 3
9 core chapters GIS toolkit Part 3
Part Route

How The Spatial Analysis Toolkit Fits Together

This part is easier to learn when the chapters read like a toolkit instead of an arbitrary list. The route starts with predicates and rasters, moves through vector operations, then builds up to terrain and monitoring workflows.

Start Here

Predicates and Raster Basics

Learn how spatial relationships and cell grids represent geographic space.

  • Point-in-polygon
  • Raster resampling
  • Map algebra
  • Raster classification
→
Then Build

Vector Analysis Toolkit

Turn geometry into queries about distance, overlap, and matching features.

  • Buffers
  • Overlay
  • Spatial joins
→
Apply To Terrain

Surface and Network Reasoning

Use elevation and friction surfaces to reason about visibility, flow, and movement.

  • Viewsheds
  • Least-cost paths
  • Watersheds

Extend the toolkit: classification, change detection, and time-series chapters show how these same spatial primitives support remote sensing workflows.

The part works best as a progression: represent space, operate on geometry and rasters, then combine those operations into terrain and monitoring models.

Chapter Map

N

Explore More Later

  • Cost-Distance and Least-Cost Paths
  • Supervised Image Classification
  • Change Detection in Satellite Imagery
  • Time Series Analysis of Satellite Data

These chapters are part of the topic-libraries volume, so they are intentionally not linked from the core-book build.