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upper case, beginning with lower case. The acronym for the variable is at the<br />

beginning of the name, while the descriptive part follows, beginning with an upper<br />

case (Eg. htElev). In addition to modules such as math and string Python also has<br />

several geoprocessing modules. One of these, arcgisscripting, accesses all the arc<br />

toolbox tools. It should be noted that the geoprocessing object that might be being<br />

called is accessed differently, depending on the version of arcGis being used.<br />

Another package called gdal (which accesses the spatial data abstraction library<br />

being utilized in this thesis) allows for the manipulation of this library. In this<br />

Python module the language connects to the original gdal programming language<br />

(usually C or an object oriented variation) using a SWIG interface compiler. An<br />

example of Python in use in GID can be its application alongside ArcGis; ArcGis<br />

was built using hundreds of arc objects such as “featureClass”, “symbol”, “field”<br />

etc., each of which has properties and methods accessed by Python using dot<br />

notation. An example of this notation is the assignment of a variable name tr =<br />

arcGisScripting.create().<br />

Another possible method for implementing the process suggested in this study is<br />

through the .NET platform. In particular VB.NET provides a programming<br />

language that can be utilized to access GeoMedia software –which is a .NET<br />

oriented group of geographic software packages provided by Intergraph. This<br />

software allows the user to interact with ESRI shapefiles and also with spatial<br />

databases created using Oracle Spatial. It also allows for developed tools to tie in<br />

with graphical editing platforms such as Autocad and Microstation which would<br />

allow for interpretation of both images and associated geospatial data. This would<br />

also mean (given appropriate licence) that the developer could access specific<br />

ancillary products for database management (for databases based in Oracle) and<br />

others ranging from map production to 3D modeling. This programming language<br />

(VB.NET) was not used in this thesis because of the potential licencing issues<br />

which may have been involved.<br />

This thesis suggests procedures which lend themselves to C as they involve<br />

repeated loops of steps, from the pixel analysis to the classification of the<br />

polygons identified by the user through the region of interest. These procedures<br />

involve processor heavy analysis and lend themselves to being developed in C. In<br />

14

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