Geopandas – How to Fix Spatial Join Not Working Issue?

Question

I have two GeoDataframes – one has polygons, the other points.

import geopandas as gpd
from shapely.geometry import Point
area = gpd.GeoDataFrame.from_file('areas.shp')
print area.crs

{u'lon_0': -91.8666666667, u'datum': u'NAD83', u'y_0': 3000000, u'no_defs': True, u'proj': u'lcc', u'x_0': 6200000, u'units': u'm', u'lat_2': 77, u'lat_1': 49, u'lat_0': 63.390675}

Addresses were assigned geolocations through an API, so I assigned a CRS 4326, as that's the one most commonly used it seems.

location['geometry'] = location.Geolocation.apply(lambda x: Point(eval(x)))
gdf = gpd.GeoDataFrame(location, geometry='geometry', crs={'init': 'epsg:4326'})

Then I changed the area's CRS:

area = area.to_crs({'init': 'epsg:4326'})

And tried to merge the two dataframes

merged = gpd.sjoin(area, gdf, op='intersects')

But the result it gives me is Empty GeoDataFrame. I am not sure why, because the points definitely do fall inside polygons. What am I doing wrong?

Here are my files

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/9lioawgsor5y4wc/AABkaaFpjAjisQEVaLrFwSnsa?dl=0

I suspect that its because of the points that were somehow not properly processed into the right coordinate system maybe.

Answer 1

Looking at your data, the issue is in the property points that you've geocoded:

|                     Property Address |               Geolocation |                      geometry |
|--------------------------------------|---------------------------|-------------------------------|
| 1586 LORNE ST E,  Kamloops BC Canada | (50.673675,  -120.298973) | POINT (50.673675 -120.298973) |

When you've geocoded the addresses you've got latitude and longitude, which is fine, but you've created the points in that order. Latitude and Longitude are Y, X measures respectively. You'll have to swap the coordinates when you create the points in your Geolocation (and doing so works fine in terms of the spatial join).