Working with coordinate systems in GeoPandas

Working with Geospatial Data in Python

Joris Van den Bossche

Open source software developer and teacher, GeoPandas maintainer

CRS information in GeoPandas

The .crs attribute of a GeoDataFrame/GeoSeries:

import geopandas
gdf = geopandas.read_file("countries.shp")
print(gdf.crs)

{'init': 'epsg:4326'}

gdf_noCRS = geopandas.read_file("countries_noCRS.shp")
print(gdf_noCRS.crs)

{}

Add CRS information to crs:

# Option 1
gdf.crs = {'init': 'epsg:4326'}

# Option 2
gdf.crs = {'proj': 'longlat', 'datum': 'WGS84', 'no_defs': True}

import geopandas
gdf = geopandas.read_file("countries_web_mercator.shp")
print(gdf.crs)

{'init': 'epsg:3857', 'no_defs': True}

The to_crs() method:

# Option 1
gdf2 = gdf.to_crs({'proj': 'longlat', 'datum': 'WGS84', 'no_defs': True})

# Option 2
gdf2 = gdf.to_crs(epsg=4326)

1) Sources with a different CRS

df1 = geopandas.read_file(...)
df2 = geopandas.read_file(...)

df2 = df2.to_crs(df1.crs)

1) Sources with a different CRS

2) Mapping (distortion of shape and distances)

1) Sources with a different CRS

2) Mapping (distortion of shape and distances)

3) Distance / area based calculations

Tips:

Useful sites:

Useful sites:

Working with Geospatial Data in Python