About the Author

Silas Toms is a geospatial programmer and analyst with a love of geography, history, food, and sports. He resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and can't decide which side of the Bay is more beautiful. He received a bachelor's degree in Geography from Humboldt State University and is currently pursuing a master's degree in GIS at San Francisco State University. With a background in GIS analysis for city governments and environmental consulting, Silas loves the combination of GIS and Python for analysis automation and data manipulation.

Working for Arini Geographics, Silas is helping governments understand how GIS can organize and simplify the management of infrastructure and the environment. This dual role as a programmer and analyst allows him to use Python and GIS to quickly produce geospatial data and tools. Combined with web mapping, these tools are transforming how governments work to serve the public. He also teaches workshops on ArcPy and web mapping at the City College of San Francisco, while hoping to one day finish his master's thesis.

Silas has worked as a reviewer on the book Python Geospatial Analysis, Packt Publishing and is working on the book Python Geospatial Development, Packt Publishing to be published in 2015.