Notebook download

Solution to the earthquake exercise¶

NOTE: This is intended as a reference for after you have attempted the problem (notebook version) yourself!

Download the data¶

In [1]:

import requests
quakes = requests.get("http://earthquake.usgs.gov/fdsnws/event/1/query.geojson",
                      params={
                          'starttime': "2000-01-01",
                          "maxlatitude": "58.723",
                          "minlatitude": "50.008",
                          "maxlongitude": "1.67",
                          "minlongitude": "-9.756",
                          "minmagnitude": "1",
                          "endtime": "2018-10-11",
                          "orderby": "time-asc"}
                      )

Parse the data as JSON¶

In [2]:

import json

In [3]:

requests_json = json.loads(quakes.text)

Investigate the data to discover how it is structured¶

There is no foolproof way of doing this. A good first step is to see the type of our data!

In [4]:

type(requests_json)

Out[4]:

dict

Now we can navigate through this dictionary to see how the information is stored in the nested dictionaries and lists. The keys method can indicate what kind of information each dictionary holds, and the len function tells us how many entries are contained in a list. How you explore is up to you!

In [5]:

requests_json.keys()

Out[5]:

dict_keys(['type', 'metadata', 'features', 'bbox'])

In [6]:

len(requests_json['features'])

Out[6]:

In [7]:

requests_json['features'][0].keys()

Out[7]:

dict_keys(['type', 'properties', 'geometry', 'id'])

In [8]:

requests_json['features'][0]['properties'].keys()

Out[8]:

dict_keys(['mag', 'place', 'time', 'updated', 'tz', 'url', 'detail', 'felt', 'cdi', 'mmi', 'alert', 'status', 'tsunami', 'sig', 'net', 'code', 'ids', 'sources', 'types', 'nst', 'dmin', 'rms', 'gap', 'magType', 'type', 'title'])

In [9]:

requests_json['features'][0]['properties']['mag']

Out[9]:

2.6

In [10]:

requests_json['features'][0]['geometry']

Out[10]:

{'type': 'Point', 'coordinates': [-2.81, 54.77, 14]}

Also note that some IDEs display JSON in a way that makes its structure easier to understand. Try saving this data in a text file and opening it in an IDE or a browser.

Find the largest quake¶

In [11]:

quakes = requests_json['features']

In [12]:

largest_so_far = quakes[0]
for quake in quakes:
    if quake['properties']['mag'] > largest_so_far['properties']['mag']:
        largest_so_far = quake
largest_so_far['properties']['mag']

Out[12]:

4.8

In [13]:

lat = largest_so_far['geometry']['coordinates'][1]
long = largest_so_far['geometry']['coordinates'][0]
print("Latitude: {} Longitude: {}".format(lat, long))

Latitude: 52.52 Longitude: -2.15

Get a map at the point of the quake¶

We saw something similar in the Greengraph example (notebook version) of the previous chapter.

In [14]:

import requests


def request_map_at(lat, long, satellite=True,
                   zoom=10, size=(400, 400)):
    base = "https://static-maps.yandex.ru/1.x/?"

    params = dict(
        z=zoom,
        size="{},{}".format(size[0], size[1]),
        ll="{},{}".format(long, lat),
        l="sat" if satellite else "map",
        lang="en_US"
    )

    return requests.get(base, params=params)

In [15]:

map_png = request_map_at(lat, long, zoom=10, satellite=False)

Display the map¶

In [16]:

from IPython.display import Image
Image(map_png.content)

Out[16]:

No description has been provided for this image