I’m a Science & Engineering Librarian and aspiring programmer, currently living in Charlottesville, Virginia. I am a long-time GIS (geographic information systems) user and a budding programmer. After a few false starts, I took the dive and learned to program in Python and I am loving its ease of use, versatility, and I’m excited to see where it takes me in the future.

I am specifically interested in combining Python’s powers with Geographic Information Systems, mostly QGIS. I really appreciate the open-source spirit of the QGIS user community and look forward to becoming increasingly involved.

Recently I’ve been working on building some QGIS plugins. You can see our latest work at: http://www.keylogeconomics.com/ecovaluator.html The EcoValuator plugin was originally produced by Key-Log Economics and it’s development was funded by a grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. The QGIS EcoValuator provides a simple means of estimating the dollar value of recreation, water supply, food, and other services for a given study area. Once installed, the plugin combines satellite data on land cover with your own spatial data describing watersheds, conservation areas, townships, or other areas of interest.

I’m writing these blog posts about issues I’ve struggled with while programming in and experimenting with QGIS. I hope they serve the wider community as resources and examples of how to do various things and hopefully you won’t have to struggle as long as I did!

In my free time I mostly like to be outside rock climbing and skiing.

Contact me

If you have more questions or comments please reach out to me: epurpur@gmail.com