13.2 Understanding Spatial Data

Spatial data involves a combination of information about locations and geometric features related that best describe the location. The most commonly used formats to store spatial information are Raster and Vector. A Raster format is a type of digital image represented by grids which can be reduced and enlarged. They are made up of a matrix of pixels with each pixel representing an area within the spatial object. A Vector format consists of geometric shapes organized in the form of shapefiles. A shapefile consist of three files under the extensions .shp, .shx and .dbf which contain the features, indices of shapes and attributes respectively.

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