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Beginner-Friendly Python for GIS: A Hands-On Journey to Satellite Imagery (SPS-WS-DIN-AI-25)

SPS-WS-DIN-AI-25

Purpose

This workshop introduces participants to the foundations of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) through practical Python programming. Designed for beginners, the course is fully hands-on: learners are encouraged to bring their laptops and code along throughout the entire workshop.
We begin with an accessible introduction to Python—how to install it (not always as straightforward as expected), how to set up a working environment, and how Python executes code. I expect this part of the class to take between 2 and 3 hours.

The second part of the workshop focuses on GIS concepts and data structures: participants learn how spatial data is represented, manipulated, and interpreted using Python’s geospatial libraries. Participants need to understand what a coordinate reference system is and why it matters. They also should understand the difference between vector data and raster data. This part should take between 3-4 hours.

In the third segment, we collaboratively build a small end-to-end GIS project in Python, applying the tools and concepts introduced earlier. The goal is to implement a small political science project leveraging the power of GIS on Python. This part of the workshop should take between 3 and 4 hours.

The final part of the workshop goes into the frontier of GIS programming: for 2 to 3 hours, participants will be introduced to modern methods for satellite imagery and image recognition, exploring how to preprocess imagery, work with spectral bands, and construct classification or feature-extraction workflows. This portion demonstrates how Python can be used to create and analyse custom geospatial datasets using contemporary remote-sensing techniques.

By the end of the workshop, participants will have written and used substantial code themselves and gained a practical understanding of how to use Python for modern GIS and remote-sensing applications.
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