Automating GIS-processes

This repository contains the source files for the course Automating GIS processes II at the University of Helsinki. While the course is taught as an on-site lab course for students of the Masters’ programme in geography there, anybody interested in learning how to use Python to automate the handling and analysis of geographic information is welcome to follow the course content at autogis-site.readthedocs.io.

License and terms of usage

We hope that the teaching material provided here is helpful to other teachers and learners. Thus, we share all the lessons openly, as well as the source code and sample data.

Teaching material and code snippets are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence and the GNU GPLv3 license, respectively.

Read more about the license and terms of usage here.

Browser based programming environment

The instructions in this course provide a programming environment that allows anyone to immediately try and run all sample code directly in the browser. This functionality is realised using Binder and the CSC’s Notebooks (the latter are available to students and staff at Finnish universities, only).

Instructions for updating the University of Helsinki course each year

There a few tasks that need to be done to prepare this course for being taught each autumn. Even without updating any of the content, reserve at minimum a few days to get everything set up.

1. Before you do anything else, make sure to tag the previous year’s course content, so that readthedocs provides a yearly version. This can (and should) have been done at the end of last autumn’s course, but please double-check:

   git clone git@github.com:Automating-GIS-processes/site
   cd site
   git tag -a 2022  # <- CHANGE THE YEAR!
   git push --tags
   

2. Update the Python environment (ensure stable versions throughout the lifetime of the course and of the course page’s version for the current year)

   • Update the pinned versions in pip’s requirements.txt (rtd uses pip!):

     # create a new virtual environment and activate it
     python -m venv --clear .virtualenv
     source .virtualenv/bin/activate
     
     # install using the _unpinned_ docs/requirements.in.txt
     pip install -r docs/requirements.in.txt
     
     # save a pinned docs/requirement.txt
     pip freeze --local -r docs/requirements.in.txt > docs/requirements.txt
     
     # deactivate the virtual environment
     deactivate
     

   • Update conda’s environment.yml in a similar way:

     • First, make sure environment.in.yml pins Python (the interpreter itself) to the lastest major version available from conda-forge. For instance, in autumn 2022, the version listed is 3.10.6; accordingly, the respective line in the environment file should read - python=3.10.
     • Then use the following commands (they’re analogue to the pip workflow, above):

       # remove a possibly existing stale environment
       conda env remove --name=autogis
       
       # install a new environment using the _unpinned_
       # ci/environment.in.yml
       conda env create --file=environment.in.yml
       
       # save a pinned vi/environment.yml
       # (removing the ‘prefix:’ line because it hard-codes
       # your system’s path)
       conda env export --no-builds --name autogis \
       | grep -Ev '^prefix:' \
       > environment.yml
       

     Note, that Python’s release schedule typically foresees a new Python version around the time of the start of the course. For instance, 2022, Python 3.11 was released 7 days before the course started. Most likely you want to stick with the previous version, as some of the packages might not have been updated in time.

3. Update the docker image for the CSC Notebooks, and upload it to CSC’s registry. Create a CSC Notebooks ‘workspace’ and ‘application’ using the docker image. Follow the instructions in the Automating-GIS-processes/csc-notebook-dockerfile repository

4. Set up Slack: Create a new Slack instance, e.g., ‘Automating-GIS-processes-2023’, and set up the channel structure such as in previous years: #general and #random exist by default, create #week1 through #week7, as well as #final-assignments; create #instructors to coordinate with the student tutors. I (@christophfink) will leave the 2022 version around, drop me a line and I’ll add you there so you can see for what we used Slack.

5. Set up GitHub classroom: register for GitHub Education (https://classroom.github.com), create a new organisation for this year’s exercise repository templates (see Automating-GIS-processes-2022, and add the exercise repositories there, one by one, as the course advances. For each exercise, create a classroom, and update the links in the respective docs/lesson-X/exercise-X.md files.

6. Update the course details defined in conf.py. Things that change every year are set up as ‘substitutions’, variables that are replaced throughout all documents. Edit them to reflect this year’s course’s details (as of October 2022, this block is starting at line 42 of conf.py):

   # The following are the main things that need to be updated every year
   # These variables are replaced throughout the course documents
   # (see the comment for the first item for an example)
   myst_substitutions = {
       "year": "2022",  # use {{year}} in markdown files to replace it with the current value
       "starting_date": "Tuesday, 1 November 2022",
       "lectures_weekday_time_location": "Tuesday, 15:15-16:45, Exactum C222",
       "work_sessions_weekday_time_location": "Friday, 12:15-16:00, Physicum A113+A114 (GIS lab)",
       ...
   }
   

Contact

This course was conceived and designed by Henrikki Tenkanen, and has been taught, maintained and improved over the years by Vuokko Heikinheimo and Håvard Wallin Aagesen. Currently (autumn term 2022), Christoph Fink is the responsible teacher.

You can find contact information on the course website.