When to Trigger
Activate this skill when the user mentions:
- GIS, geographic information systems, spatial data
- Coordinates, latitude/longitude, projections, CRS
- Spatial statistics, spatial autocorrelation, hotspot analysis
- Remote sensing, satellite imagery, NDVI, land cover classification
- Mapping, cartography, choropleth, heatmaps
- Geocoding, reverse geocoding, routing, network analysis
- Shapefiles, GeoJSON, raster data, vector data
Step-by-Step Methodology
- Data acquisition and format assessment - Identify data types: vector (points, lines, polygons in shapefile/GeoJSON/GeoPackage) or raster (GeoTIFF, NetCDF). Determine coordinate reference system (CRS). Check for common issues: mixed CRS, topology errors, missing geometries.
- Projection and transformation - Ensure all layers share the same CRS. Use geographic CRS (WGS84/EPSG:4326) for global data, projected CRS (UTM, state plane) for area/distance calculations. Apply appropriate datum transformation.
- Spatial operations - Perform geoprocessing: buffer, intersect, union, clip, dissolve. For point data: spatial joins, nearest neighbor analysis. For raster: reclassification, map algebra, zonal statistics.