Many biologists do fieldwork covering large areas, collecting samples in multiple localities. Specimens are usually associated with GPS coordinates, but it might be hard to keep track of the names of localities where they were collected.
If road and town names cannot be obtained while in the field, this information can be retrieve from coordinates later from Google maps.
This script takes a list of latitudes and longitudes and returns the same list, but adding information about park, road, municipality, state and country associated with each record.
This is a command-line program written in python, so you need to have python installed. Also, you need some non-standard libraries: pandas and googlemaps
To use the program, download it and navigate to the folder where you downloaded. Once in the folder, type ./rev_geocoding.py -h to view a list of arguments used by the program.
The following will read input.xls as the input table and get results in portuguese.
./rev_geocoding.py -i input.xls -l pt-BR -k AIzaSyBRcgh0NBzbtx8567HJcixDILCYcThe following will read input.csv as the input table and get results in British English, with states abbreviated.
./rev_geocoding.py -i input.csv -l en-GB -s -k AIzaSyBRcgh0NBzbtx8567HJcixDILCYc-i INPUT
The program takes as input a table with named columns. This table could be either in Excel (.xls or .xlsx) or csv format. The only requirement is that the table has a columns named lat and a column named lon, with records containing values for latitude and longitude, respectively. Latitudes and longitudes should be given in decimal degrees format. Other columns will be ignored. Example:
| Field number | collector | lat | lon | notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| COL0234 | Medeiros | 42.378715 | -71.115683 | MCZ |
| COL0246 | Cunha | -25.588286 | -46.610232 | MZSP |
-k KEY You need a Google Maps API Key, which is a unique identifier that google gives to you allowing the use of their mapping service for free. Check the following link for information on how to get one: https://developers.google.com/maps/web-services/
-l LANGUAGE
By default, the program returns results in English. If you want results in another language, you have to call it with the -l option. Check this website for languages supported by Google: https://developers.google.com/maps/faq#languagesupport
-s SHORT NAMES
If you use the option -s, the program will output abbreviated names for states/provinces. For example, MA instead of Massachusetts, or SP instead of São Paulo.
-L LOCALITY
The name of the field that Google uses to store locality information is not standardized across the world. For example, the standard program will return cities and towns in Brazil, but counties in the USA. This flag makes the program return towns and cities for the USA, and might also work for other places.
If run is successful, the program will copy the input table and add columns named 'municipality', 'state', 'country', 'route' and 'park'. If columns with these names already exist, information will be overwritten.
Output will be written to both an Excel and a csv file, named geocoding_results and saved in the folder in which the program was called.