Warning: This document is for the development version of AutoGIS. The main version is master.

# Spatial join¶

Spatial join is yet another classic GIS problem. Getting attributes from one layer and transferring them into another layer based on their spatial relationship is something you most likely need to do on a regular basis.

In the previous section we learned how to perform a Point in Polygon query. We could now apply those techniques and create our own function to perform a spatial join between two layers based on their spatial relationship. We could, for example, join the attributes of a polygon layer into a point layer where each point would get the attributes of a polygon that contains the point.

Luckily, spatial join is already implemented in Geopandas, thus we do not need to create our own function for doing it. There are three possible types of join that can be applied in spatial join that are determined with op -parameter in the gpd.sjoin() -function:

• "intersects"
• "within"
• "contains"

Sounds familiar? Yep, all of those spatial relationships were discussed in the Point in Polygon lesson, thus you should know how they work.

Furthermore, pay attention to the different options for the type of join via the how parameter; “left”, “right” and “inner”. You can read more about these options in the geopandas sjoin documentation and pandas guide for merge, join and concatenate

Let’s perform a spatial join between these two layers: - Addresses: the geocoded address-point (we created this Shapefile in the geocoding tutorial) - Population grid: 250m x 250m grid polygon layer that contains population information from the Helsinki Region. - The population grid a dataset is produced by the Helsinki Region Environmental Services Authority (HSY) (see this page to access data from different years). - You can download the data from from this link in the Helsinki Region Infroshare (HRI) open data portal.

• Here, we will access the data directly from the HSY wfs:
[1]:

import geopandas as gpd
from pyproj import CRS
import requests
import geojson

# Specify the url for web feature service
url = 'https://kartta.hsy.fi/geoserver/wfs'

# Specify parameters (read data in json format).
# Available feature types in this particular data source: http://geo.stat.fi/geoserver/vaestoruutu/wfs?service=wfs&version=2.0.0&request=describeFeatureType
params = dict(service='WFS',
version='2.0.0',
request='GetFeature',
typeName='asuminen_ja_maankaytto:Vaestotietoruudukko_2018',
outputFormat='json')

# Fetch data from WFS using requests
r = requests.get(url, params=params)

# Create GeoDataFrame from geojson

• Check the result:
[2]:

pop.head()

[2]:

geometry index asukkaita asvaljyys ika0_9 ika10_19 ika20_29 ika30_39 ika40_49 ika50_59 ika60_69 ika70_79 ika_yli80
0 MULTIPOLYGON Z (((25476499.999 6674248.999 0.0... 3342 108 45 11 23 6 7 26 17 8 6 4
1 MULTIPOLYGON Z (((25476749.997 6674498.998 0.0... 3503 273 35 35 24 52 62 40 26 25 9 0
2 MULTIPOLYGON Z (((25476999.994 6675749.004 0.0... 3660 239 34 46 24 24 45 33 30 25 10 2
3 MULTIPOLYGON Z (((25476999.994 6675499.004 0.0... 3661 202 30 52 37 13 36 43 11 4 3 3
4 MULTIPOLYGON Z (((25476999.994 6675249.005 0.0... 3662 261 30 64 32 36 64 34 20 6 3 2

Okey so we have multiple columns in the dataset but the most important one here is the column asukkaita (“population” in Finnish) that tells the amount of inhabitants living under that polygon.

• Let’s change the name of that column into pop18 so that it is more intuitive. As you might remember, we can easily rename (Geo)DataFrame column names using the rename() function where we pass a dictionary of new column names like this: columns={'oldname': 'newname'}.
[3]:

# Change the name of a column
pop = pop.rename(columns={'asukkaita': 'pop18'})

# See the column names and confirm that we now have a column called 'pop17'
pop.columns

[3]:

Index(['geometry', 'index', 'pop18', 'asvaljyys', 'ika0_9', 'ika10_19',
'ika20_29', 'ika30_39', 'ika40_49', 'ika50_59', 'ika60_69', 'ika70_79',
'ika_yli80'],
dtype='object')

• Let’s also get rid of all unnecessary columns by selecting only columns that we need i.e. pop18 and geometry
[4]:

# Subset columns
pop = pop[["pop18", "geometry"]]

[5]:

pop.head()

[5]:

pop18 geometry
0 108 MULTIPOLYGON Z (((25476499.999 6674248.999 0.0...
1 273 MULTIPOLYGON Z (((25476749.997 6674498.998 0.0...
2 239 MULTIPOLYGON Z (((25476999.994 6675749.004 0.0...
3 202 MULTIPOLYGON Z (((25476999.994 6675499.004 0.0...
4 261 MULTIPOLYGON Z (((25476999.994 6675249.005 0.0...

Now we have cleaned the data and have only those columns that we need for our analysis.

## Join the layers¶

Now we are ready to perform the spatial join between the two layers that we have. The aim here is to get information about how many people live in a polygon that contains an individual address-point . Thus, we want to join attributes from the population layer we just modified into the addresses point layer addresses.shp that we created trough gecoding in the previous section.

[6]:

# Addresses filpath


[7]:

# Check the head of the file

[7]:

0 Ruoholahti, 14, Itämerenkatu, Ruoholahti, Läns... 1000 Itämerenkatu 14, 00101 Helsinki, Finland POINT (24.91556 60.16320)
1 Kamppi, 1, Kampinkuja, Kamppi, Eteläinen suurp... 1001 Kampinkuja 1, 00100 Helsinki, Finland POINT (24.93169 60.16902)
2 Bangkok9, 8, Kaivokatu, Keskusta, Kluuvi, Etel... 1002 Kaivokatu 8, 00101 Helsinki, Finland POINT (24.94168 60.16996)
3 Hermannin rantatie, Kyläsaari, Hermanni, Helsi... 1003 Hermannin rantatie 1, 00580 Helsinki, Finland POINT (24.97193 60.19700)
4 Hesburger, 9, Tyynenmerenkatu, Jätkäsaari, Län... 1005 Tyynenmerenkatu 9, 00220 Helsinki, Finland POINT (24.92160 60.15665)

In order to do a spatial join, the layers need to be in the same projection

• Check the crs of input layers:
[8]:

addresses.crs

[8]:

{'init': 'epsg:4326'}

[9]:

pop.crs


If the crs information is missing from the population grid, we can define the coordinate reference system as ETRS GK-25 (EPSG:3879) because we know what it is based on the population grid metadata.

[10]:

# Define crs
pop.crs = CRS.from_epsg(3879).to_wkt()

[11]:

pop.crs

[11]:

'PROJCRS["ETRS89 / GK25FIN",BASEGEOGCRS["ETRS89",DATUM["European Terrestrial Reference System 1989",ELLIPSOID["GRS 1980",6378137,298.257222101,LENGTHUNIT["metre",1]]],PRIMEM["Greenwich",0,ANGLEUNIT["degree",0.0174532925199433]],ID["EPSG",4258]],CONVERSION["Finland Gauss-Kruger zone 25",METHOD["Transverse Mercator",ID["EPSG",9807]],PARAMETER["Latitude of natural origin",0,ANGLEUNIT["degree",0.0174532925199433],ID["EPSG",8801]],PARAMETER["Longitude of natural origin",25,ANGLEUNIT["degree",0.0174532925199433],ID["EPSG",8802]],PARAMETER["Scale factor at natural origin",1,SCALEUNIT["unity",1],ID["EPSG",8805]],PARAMETER["False easting",25500000,LENGTHUNIT["metre",1],ID["EPSG",8806]],PARAMETER["False northing",0,LENGTHUNIT["metre",1],ID["EPSG",8807]]],CS[Cartesian,2],AXIS["northing (N)",north,ORDER[1],LENGTHUNIT["metre",1]],AXIS["easting (E)",east,ORDER[2],LENGTHUNIT["metre",1]],USAGE[SCOPE["unknown"],AREA["Finland - 24.5°E to 25.5°E onshore nominal"],BBOX[59.94,24.5,68.9,25.5]],ID["EPSG",3879]]'

[12]:

# Are the layers in the same projection?

[12]:

False


Let’s re-project addresses to the projection of the population layer:

[13]:

addresses = addresses.to_crs(pop.crs)

• Let’s make sure that the coordinate reference system of the layers are identical
[14]:

# Check the crs of address points

# Check the crs of population layer
print(pop.crs)

# Do they match now?

PROJCRS["ETRS89 / GK25FIN",BASEGEOGCRS["ETRS89",DATUM["European Terrestrial Reference System 1989",ELLIPSOID["GRS 1980",6378137,298.257222101,LENGTHUNIT["metre",1]]],PRIMEM["Greenwich",0,ANGLEUNIT["degree",0.0174532925199433]],ID["EPSG",4258]],CONVERSION["Finland Gauss-Kruger zone 25",METHOD["Transverse Mercator",ID["EPSG",9807]],PARAMETER["Latitude of natural origin",0,ANGLEUNIT["degree",0.0174532925199433],ID["EPSG",8801]],PARAMETER["Longitude of natural origin",25,ANGLEUNIT["degree",0.0174532925199433],ID["EPSG",8802]],PARAMETER["Scale factor at natural origin",1,SCALEUNIT["unity",1],ID["EPSG",8805]],PARAMETER["False easting",25500000,LENGTHUNIT["metre",1],ID["EPSG",8806]],PARAMETER["False northing",0,LENGTHUNIT["metre",1],ID["EPSG",8807]]],CS[Cartesian,2],AXIS["northing (N)",north,ORDER[1],LENGTHUNIT["metre",1]],AXIS["easting (E)",east,ORDER[2],LENGTHUNIT["metre",1]],USAGE[SCOPE["unknown"],AREA["Finland - 24.5°E to 25.5°E onshore nominal"],BBOX[59.94,24.5,68.9,25.5]],ID["EPSG",3879]]
PROJCRS["ETRS89 / GK25FIN",BASEGEOGCRS["ETRS89",DATUM["European Terrestrial Reference System 1989",ELLIPSOID["GRS 1980",6378137,298.257222101,LENGTHUNIT["metre",1]]],PRIMEM["Greenwich",0,ANGLEUNIT["degree",0.0174532925199433]],ID["EPSG",4258]],CONVERSION["Finland Gauss-Kruger zone 25",METHOD["Transverse Mercator",ID["EPSG",9807]],PARAMETER["Latitude of natural origin",0,ANGLEUNIT["degree",0.0174532925199433],ID["EPSG",8801]],PARAMETER["Longitude of natural origin",25,ANGLEUNIT["degree",0.0174532925199433],ID["EPSG",8802]],PARAMETER["Scale factor at natural origin",1,SCALEUNIT["unity",1],ID["EPSG",8805]],PARAMETER["False easting",25500000,LENGTHUNIT["metre",1],ID["EPSG",8806]],PARAMETER["False northing",0,LENGTHUNIT["metre",1],ID["EPSG",8807]]],CS[Cartesian,2],AXIS["northing (N)",north,ORDER[1],LENGTHUNIT["metre",1]],AXIS["easting (E)",east,ORDER[2],LENGTHUNIT["metre",1]],USAGE[SCOPE["unknown"],AREA["Finland - 24.5°E to 25.5°E onshore nominal"],BBOX[59.94,24.5,68.9,25.5]],ID["EPSG",3879]]

[14]:

True


Now they should be identical. Thus, we can be sure that when doing spatial queries between layers the locations match and we get the right results e.g. from the spatial join that we are conducting here.

• Let’s now join the attributes from pop GeoDataFrame into addresses GeoDataFrame by using gpd.sjoin() -function:
[15]:

# Make a spatial join
join = gpd.sjoin(addresses, pop, how="inner", op="within")

[16]:

join.head()

[16]:

0 Ruoholahti, 14, Itämerenkatu, Ruoholahti, Läns... 1000 Itämerenkatu 14, 00101 Helsinki, Finland POINT (25495311.608 6672258.695) 1514 515
1 Kamppi, 1, Kampinkuja, Kamppi, Eteläinen suurp... 1001 Kampinkuja 1, 00100 Helsinki, Finland POINT (25496207.840 6672906.173) 1600 182
3 Hermannin rantatie, Kyläsaari, Hermanni, Helsi... 1003 Hermannin rantatie 1, 00580 Helsinki, Finland POINT (25498443.209 6676021.310) 1904 275
4 Hesburger, 9, Tyynenmerenkatu, Jätkäsaari, Län... 1005 Tyynenmerenkatu 9, 00220 Helsinki, Finland POINT (25495645.995 6671528.068) 1550 1435
6 Itäväylä, Vartioharju, Vartiokylä, Helsinki, H... 1007 Itäväylä 3, 00950 Helsinki, Finland POINT (25506149.985 6678773.518) 3007 155

Awesome! Now we have performed a successful spatial join where we got two new columns into our join GeoDataFrame, i.e. index_right that tells the index of the matching polygon in the population grid and pop18 which is the population in the cell where the address-point is located.

• Let’s still check how many rows of data we have now:
[17]:

len(join)

[17]:

28


Did we lose some data here?

[18]:

len(addresses)

[18]:

34


If we plot the layers on top of each other, we can observe that some of the points are located outside the populated grid squares (increase figure size if you can’t see this properly!)

[19]:

%matplotlib inline
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

# Create a figure with one subplot
fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(15,8))

# Plot population grid
pop.plot(ax=ax)

# Plot points

[19]:

<matplotlib.axes._subplots.AxesSubplot at 0x7fa2f6d68d30>


Let’s also visualize the joined output:

• Plot the points and use the pop18 column to indicate the color. cmap -parameter tells to use a sequential colormap for the values, markersize adjusts the size of a point, scheme parameter can be used to adjust the classification method based on pysal, and legend tells that we want to have a legend:
[24]:

# Create a figure with one subplot
fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(10,6))

# Plot the points with population info
join.plot(ax=ax, column='pop18', cmap="Reds", markersize=15, scheme='quantiles', legend=True);

plt.title("Amount of inhabitants living close the the point");

# Remove white space around the figure
plt.tight_layout()


In a similar way, we can plot the original population grid and check the overall population distribution in Helsinki:

[25]:

# Create a figure with one subplot
fig, ax = plt.subplots(figsize=(10,6))

# Plot the grid with population info
pop.plot(ax=ax, column='pop18', cmap="Reds", scheme='quantiles', legend=True);

plt.title("Population 2018 in 250 x 250 m grid squares");

# Remove white space around the figure
plt.tight_layout()

• Finally, let’s save the result point layer into a file:
[22]:

# Output path