2025-10-31 –, Auditorium
Geospatial research projects often involve large, complex datasets, and the analysis frequently needs to be repeated, which can be time-consuming and error-prone. This makes automation, reproducibility, and scalability essential. Traditional Geographic Information System (GIS) software provides tools to support automation, but they can be difficult to maintain, hard to share, challenging to learn, not always free, and difficult to integrate with other data systems.
While many GIS platforms (e.g., ArcGIS and QGIS) include Python scripting, using Python standalone allows combining different libraries and methodological approaches, developing web-based GIS applications, and creating workflows that are efficient, flexible, and capable of handling hundreds of spatial data formats.
Packages such as GeoPandas, Shapely, Rasterio, and GDAL replace manual GIS steps with clear, scriptable workflows. These workflows can be version-controlled, parameterized, and shared across projects or organizations. Python allows geospatial specialists not only to automate tasks like data cleaning and map-making, but also to integrate spatial analysis with areas such as machine learning, web applications, and cloud platforms.
This work includes examples from real projects, such as cleaning shapefiles, fixing projections, and comparing multiple layers of data. While these tasks can also be performed using traditional GIS software, using the appropriate Python libraries provides faster, more reliable, and more reproducible solutions.
In this talk, we will showcase how Python can be used to automate everyday spatial analysis tasks, using real examples from the professional field of environmental and infrastructure mapping. We will demonstrate lines of scripts utilizing basic python libraries for geospatial analysis that support the quality of geospatial data and compare spatial layers to gain useful insights.
The talk begins with an introduction to the main formats used in geospatial data and some fundamental geospatial concepts. Aftwerwards, we will discuss on common challenges encountered when working with data in traditional GIS software, and how Python provides cleaner, more scalable solutions.
Whether run independently or integrated with existing GIS software, Python scripts can save time, reduce errors, and improve data quality. Attendees will leave with actionable insights and inspiration to create their own GIS tools using Python libraries.
My name is Eleni Tokmaktsi, I hold a master’s degree in applied geophysics and currently work as a geospatial data engineer in kartECO company.
Over the years, I’ve worked with data in many forms—from collection to processing and analysis—using tools such as Python and MATLAB. I’ve tackled a range of challenges, from remote sensing to subsurface imaging, and what drives me most is understanding the problem that needs to be solved.
For the past two years, my focus has been on geospatial data, building custom GIS tools and automating workflows to support decision-making.