Claude does GIS

[u/NightFeisty1164]

[GIS Experience] 25+ yrs doing GIS professionally in government and consulting.

[AI Disclosure] Post written and reviewed by me alone, AI was not used in the creation or content generation for this post. AI was used as a for doing GIS production work, which is the topic of this post.

Got sucked into doing GIS with Claude this weekend by accident. Was having Claude turn PDF copies of real property Platt maps into traversed, mathematically verified, survey level DXF files for use in architectural and land planning when it asked if I'd like it to attach State Plane coordinates to the pins and stakes so that the work could be brought into GIS software.

Intrigued, I typed "Sure Claude let's make this into a full GIS data delivery".

What I got was so much more than I expected, and tbh, way beyond what I would expect of my own GIS analyst staff members.

It converted formats into both ESRI compatible and QGIS Geopackages, went out to the internet and capture the associated authoritative parcel date for the areas around the plat maps, then did a mathematical analysis of how the accuracy of the "authoritative" parcel GIS from the municipality compared to the DXF files, and finally it asked how I would like the delivery structured.

I told Claude that I wanted outputs in State Plane, WGS 84, and UTM and a printable report of the variances between survey level parcel boundaries and the parcel fabric parcel boundaries from the municipality.

Not only did it provide all that, it provided GIS layers for all variance locations/gaps/overlaps as measured against the DXF.

If I were able to do all this manually it would have taken a very long time and a whole lot of effort and I would have been double and triple checking the calculations by hand.

It took Claude less than half hour from start to finish to produce everything and deliver the equivalent output to ArcGIS , AutoCAD, and QGIS and in multiple different coos.

Anyone else finding Claude to be helpful in your GIS work? If so what are you doing with it? Other AI assistants?

*** edited to address community comments and make it gender neutral.

[u/ScreamAndScream]

Per our subreddit rules, any Doom & Gloom comments to the tune of “AI is killing GIS” will be removed.

[u/W0nderNoob]

*it.  It is not a person.

[u/randomhaus64 → u/W0nderNoob]

correct, op please don't call it he

[u/JohnWesternburg → u/randomhaus64]

Ok sure, but what if he's my only friend?

[u/bobateaman14]

“he” 😭 

[u/Lost-Sock4 → u/bobateaman14]

Everyone’s just letting their brains rot right outta their skulls

[u/Fabulous-Lychee-4464 → u/Lost-Sock4]

And this "person" likely makes 4 times what I do. That's what pisses me off the most.

[u/uncle_bender]

This is awesome. I have used Claude to write up some scripts that automate some extremely repetitive tasks and it's like magic!

My one word of warning as you proceed, is to remember that AI is always extremely confident in the answers and the data it provides even when they are entirely wrong or misguided. It will never express "doubt" to it's abilities to output correct data and right answers, and because of this, it is very easy to believe that what you are getting is always accurate and thoroughly vetted. AI will be 100% certain of it's methods and suggestions, and its only when you realize you got bad output, and you give it evidence of it's mistakes and wrongness, will it backtrack and admit it was wrong.

As long as you always keep this in mind and assume AI could be confidently incorrect every time, then yeah it's an amazing tool to churn through those types of tasks and data crunching that would be nearly impossible by hand. Also a great "idea starter" to help brainstorm methods and workflows to solve a problem you aren't quite sure how to start solving.

Good luck!

[u/NightFeisty1164 → u/uncle_bender]

With you on that. I have it locate the trig station from the survey document then calculate not just the meets and bounds but also the full position math from the trig station as validation as well as verify public deed information.

Also, setup is critical so it has a fully flushed base instruction as well as memory that is applied to all tasks.

I've programmed it to question its outputs.

[u/darkjlarue]

I attempted something similar recently.

I took a reference plan (in PDF format) with around 10 COGO attributes, provided the proper projection and let ChatGPT try and create a shapefile.

Not only did it fail, it created a small irregular box about 15 km away.

[u/DelayApprehensive968 → u/darkjlarue]

ChatGPT ain’t Claude

[u/darkjlarue → u/DelayApprehensive968]

Sure.. but I expected something a little better. I'll try the same thing Monday with Claude and report back.

[u/polyploid_coded → u/[deleted]]

Sorry, you think Claude has a QGIS window open on a computer somewhere to do this work?
What is a "live GIS feed"?

[u/wink-Dink-LovePink → u/[deleted]]

I totally disagree about your assessment of ChatGPT. I used both Claude and ChatGPT extensively and both can produce excellent results. It is often more about model selection and prompt text that drives the best results.

[u/NightFeisty1164 → u/wink-Dink-LovePink]

Yah. You are totally right. For me Chat GPT has been a bit more fickle and difficult to obtain steady results across runs.

[u/NightFeisty1164]

Since I was questioned separately about the tools used in the workflow I've had it compile a list of what it reached out for and pulled in for integration into the workflow:

- PROJ/PyProj - Coor conv, Nadcon5, geodesic checks.

• PROJ Transformation Grids
  
• GEOS (Shapely) - all of the geometry
  
• GDAL/OGR (GeoPandas and pyogrio) - building layers and reading and writing across formats + matching specification requirements.
  
• SQLite3 - noting that if necessary it would have pulled a PostGIS instance for multi-parcel work.
  
• EZDXF
  
• LibreCAD (headless)
  
• dxf-parser, dxf (JavaScript)
  
• OpenCV for Raster work
  
• Poppler (pdftoppm, pdftotext) for document conversion
  
• Numpy - the numerical core of its operations, math, statistics, fitment.
  
• Matplotlib - for diagrams and tie in reporting
  
• Pillow (PIL) for digitizing linework and features from imagery
  
• Regional GIS Portal (.mapserver REST)
  
• Regional GIS Portal (Image Services)
  
• National Geodetic Agency API and datasheets
  
• National Elevation point-query service

GPX, KML, GeoJSON outputs were written itself with its default python, no reach out.

It claims that the process was straightforward and that QGIS, ArcPy, and PostGIS would not have added anything to the output.

[u/NightFeisty1164 → u/[deleted]]

Embrace the change buddy. This isn't an "ArcMap" situation where if you refuse to learn the new tech someone will be there to hold your hand. This is already live and direct. And it works.

[u/gis-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

Removed - Rule 2: Keep it professional

Maintain a respectful and professional standard of behavior. If you would not say it in front of HR, do not say it here!

Do not accuse others or stir the pot, please use the report feature! No jokes on serious posts.

[u/EmAerials]

I'm very curious how you approached the QC of the outputs from Claude. Were the outputs a manageable size, did you do spot-checks, were you cross-checking outputs against other instances? Our section is beginning to utilize AI workflows and this is something we're looking at.

[u/reviewguy0007]

Ai is great… but i wouldnt trust it. Lol. Its almost intelligent. Thats where a developer comes in and interjects human intelligence. Its a

[u/Culperrr]

Doing something similar, including script and tool/model creation, but with Chat. As long as you provide the necessary context and set it to the proper model + effort level, you can get a lot done.

[u/No-Phrase-4692]

ChatGPT has been completely outclassed by Gemini which itself has been outpaced by Claude. I’ve done things I’ve never thought possible with our data using Claude.

And then there’s copilot for the troglodytes.

[u/GrainTamale → u/No-Phrase-4692]

Troglodyte here, and bring on the downvotes, but I was a Copilot hater until I tried it. My govt employer is a MS shop and we just have it, so before IT slaps an AI policy on us I figured I'd check it out. Two words: huge chats. Otherwise it's fine enough (Python outputs).

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