python - Buffer GeoPandas dataframe based on a column value

I have a GeoPandas dataframe with a series of polygons in the geometry column. I also have a bufferdist column for each row containing an integer. The dataframe looks like

    bufferdist  geometry
0   600     POLYGON ((-122.9486846923828 48.65513944114847...
1   300     POLYGON ((-122.8642272949219 48.68053413474483...

How can I buffer each polygon in the dataframe to the distance of the bufferdist column?

I tried this

df['geometry'] = df.buffer(df.bufferdist)

but it returns the stacktrace

ArgumentError                             Traceback (most recent call last)
 in ()
----> 1 df['geometry'] = df.buffer(df.bufferdist)

C:\Users\nickp\AppData\Local\Programs\ArcGIS\Pro\bin\Python\envs\arcgispro-py3\lib\site-packages\geopandas\base.py in buffer(self, distance, resolution)
    298     def buffer(self, distance, resolution=16):
    299         return gpd.GeoSeries([geom.buffer(distance, resolution)
--> 300                              for geom in self.geometry],

    301                          index=self.index, crs=self.crs)
    302 

C:\Users\nickp\AppData\Local\Programs\ArcGIS\Pro\bin\Python\envs\arcgispro-py3\lib\site-packages\geopandas\base.py in (.0)
    298     def buffer(self, distance, resolution=16):
    299         return gpd.GeoSeries([geom.buffer(distance, resolution)
--> 300                              for geom in self.geometry],
    301                          index=self.index, crs=self.crs)
    302 


C:\Users\nickp\AppData\Local\Programs\ArcGIS\Pro\bin\Python\envs\arcgispro-py3\lib\site-packages\shapely\geometry\base.py in buffer(self, distance, resolution, quadsegs, cap_style, join_style, mitre_limit)
    582                 'Cannot compute offset from zero-length line segment')
    583         if cap_style == CAP_STYLE.round and join_style == JOIN_STYLE.round:
--> 584             return geom_factory(self.impl['buffer'](self, distance, res))
    585 
    586         if 'buffer_with_style' not in self.impl:

C:\Users\nickp\AppData\Local\Programs\ArcGIS\Pro\bin\Python\envs\arcgispro-py3\lib\site-packages\shapely\topology.py in __call__(self, this, *args)
     76     def __call__(self, this, *args):
     77         self._validate(this)

---> 78         return self.fn(this._geom, *args)

ArgumentError: argument 3: : wrong type

I'm sure I'm doing something wrong. Is there a better way?

Answer

Simply apply a function to each row:

# for each row...
def buffer(row):
     return row.geometry.buffer(row.bufferid)


import geopandas as gpd
test = gpd.read_file("test_buffer.shp")
test.head(3)
      bufferid               geometry
0       300  POLYGON ((-0.6927016645326504 0.50320102432778...
1       100  POLYGON ((-0.5211267605633801 0.40332906530089...
2       600  POLYGON ((-0.7208706786171574 0.17285531370038...

# copy of the dataframe

buffered = test.copy()
# apply the function
buffered['geometry'] = buffered.apply(buffer, axis=1)
buffered.head(3)
     bufferid                geometry
0       300  POLYGON ((-226.0421711994954 198.5375833429314...
1       100  POLYGON ((-87.13968536542335 50.37557441425873...
2       600  POLYGON ((-317.4813433539906 509.7440504871266...

Or with lambda functions

buffered = test.copy()
buffered['geometry'] = buffered.apply(lambda x: x.geometry.buffer(x.bufferid), axis=1)
buffered.head(3)
     bufferid                geometry
0       300  POLYGON ((-226.0421711994954 198.5375833429314...
1       100  POLYGON ((-87.13968536542335 50.37557441425873...
2       600  POLYGON ((-317.4813433539906 509.7440504871266...