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Session 2: Spatial modeling with machine learning

Leads: Heather Savoy (SCINet Computational Biologist), Brian Stucky (SCINet Computational Biologist)


This session will have a presentation on machine learning methods for spatial modeling use cases followed by a hands-on tutorial implementing some of those methods. This content is a continuation of the Spatial Interpolation tutorial held at a working group meeting in May 2023. Although that previous tutorial was in R, this tutorial will be in Python.


Session objectives

This session will explore examples of spatial modeling tasks, e.g. spatial interpolation from point data to gridded data, with the machine learning methods Random Forest. The content of the session will primarily focus on the spatial component, e.g., how to include spatial proximity as a predictor, although basic machine learning concepts will be discussed as relevant.

The goals of this session are to:

  • Introduce key concepts about incorporating spatial data in machine learning with examples from recent literature
  • Provide examples in Python on how to:
    • read in spatial (vector and raster) datasets and reformat them to use in machine learning functions
    • compare the performance of machine learning approaches for spatial prediction
    • visualize observed spatial data and the prediction results


Agenda

This session will have a short presentation followed by an interactive tutorial:

  • Presentation: Introduction to machine learning methods applied to spatial data with examples from recent literature
  • Python tutorial: example code for the following spatial modeling tasks with two approaches to including spatial proximity in machine learning models:
    • Spatial interpolation from point observations
    • Spatial prediction from point observations and gridded covariates


Tutorial instructions

Steps to prepare for the tutorial:

  1. Login to Atlas Open OnDemand at https://atlas-ood.hpc.msstate.edu/. For more information on SCINet login procedures, see the SCINet access user guide.

  2. Launch a Jupyter-A100 session. Under the Interactive Apps menu, select Jupyter-A100. Specify the following input values on the page:

    • Python Version: 3.10.8
    • Lab or Notebook: JupyterLab
    • Account Name: geospatialworkshop
    • Partition Name: gpu-a100
    • QOS: ood – Max Time: 8-00:00:00
    • Number of hours: 4
    • Number of nodes: 1
    • Number of tasks: 1
    • Additional Slurm Parameters: --gres=gpu:a100_1g.10gb:1 --mem=32G --reservation=workshop

    Click Launch. The screen will update to the Interactive Sessions page. When your Jupyter session is ready, the top card will update from Queued to Running and a Connect to Jupyter button will appear. Click Connect to Jupyter.

  3. Open a terminal session within JupyterLab. Within JupyterLab, open the “File” menu, then “New” -> “Terminal”.

  4. Setup kernel for JupyterLab. In the workshop project space, there is a workshop_venv virtual environment for the packages we will be using during the workshop tutorials. You will create a kernel called grwg_workshop to access from JupyterLab.

    To create a new kernelspec from the virtual environment:

     source /project/geospatialworkshop/workshop_venv/bin/activate
 ipython kernel install --name "grwg_workshop" --user
 cp /project/geospatialworkshop/grwg_workshop.json ~/.local/share/jupyter/kernels/grwg_workshop/kernel.json

  5. Copy the Session 2 material from the workshop project space to a temporary workshop folder. To create your temporary workshop folder, run these commands after replacing firstname.lastname with your actual SCINet username:

     cd /90daydata/shared
 mkdir firstname.lastname
 cd firstname.lastname

    Create a symbolic link to your new folder from your home directory (replace firstname.lastname with your actual SCINet username). You will then have a shortcut called my_geoworkshop in your home directory that points to your workshop folder. This shortcut will allow you to access your workshop files from JupyterLab:

     ln -s /90daydata/shared/firstname.lastname ~/my_geoworkshop

    Make a copy of the Session 2 folder in your new workshop folder:

     cp -r /project/geospatialworkshop/session_2-spatial_modeling_ml/ .

  6. Restart JupyterLab. You will need to restart JupyterLab in order to use the new kernel you created for step 4, above. Follow these steps:

    1. Close the JupyterLab tab in your browser.
    2. Return to the Open OnDemand tab in your browser, and click the Delete button that is inside the card for the running “Jupyter-A100” session. (If you do not see the running session cards in Open OnDemand, click the interactive sessions icon next to “Interactive Apps” at the top of the page.) Wait a few seconds for the page to refresh.
    3. Repeat the instructions for step 2, above, to start a new JupyterLab session. Open OnDemand should automatically reuse the settings you entered the first time you launched JupyterLab.

  7. Start session and select kernel: Once you are in JupyterLab, navigate to ~/my_geoworkshop/session_2-spatial_modeling_ml/ in the left navigation pane, and open the spatial_modeling_ml.ipynb notebook by double-clicking that file. Then, select your kernel by clicking on Kernel > Change kernel… within the top navigation menu of the Jupyter window. A pop-up will appear with a dropdown menu containing the grwg_workshop kernel we made above. Click on the grwg_workshop kernel and click the Select button.

  8. Follow along during the tutorial session!