python - GeoPandas: Find nearest point in other dataframe

I've got 2 geodataframes:

import geopandas as gpd
from shapely.geometry import Point
gpd1 = gpd.GeoDataFrame([['John',1,Point(1,1)],['Smith',1,Point(2,2)],['Soap',1,Point(0,2)]],columns=['Name','ID','geometry'])
gpd2 = gpd.GeoDataFrame([['Work',Point(0,1.1)],['Shops',Point(2.5,2)],['Home',Point(1,1.1)]],columns=['Place','geometry'])

and I want to find the name of the nearest point in gpd2 for each row in gpd1:

desired_output = 


    Name  ID     geometry  Nearest
0   John   1  POINT (1 1)     Home
1  Smith   1  POINT (2 2)    Shops
2   Soap   1  POINT (0 2)     Work

I've been trying to get this working using a lambda function:

gpd1['Nearest'] = gpd1.apply(lambda row: min_dist(row.geometry,gpd2)['Place'] , axis=1)

with

def min_dist(point, gpd2):


    geoseries = some_function()
    return geoseries

Answer

You can directly use the Shapely function Nearest points (the geometries of the GeoSeries are Shapely geometries):

from shapely.ops import nearest_points
# unary union of the gpd2 geomtries 
pts3 = gpd2.geometry.unary_union
def near(point, pts=pts3):
     # find the nearest point and return the corresponding Place value

     nearest = gpd2.geometry == nearest_points(point, pts)[1]
     return gpd2[nearest].Place.get_values()[0]
gpd1['Nearest'] = gpd1.apply(lambda row: near(row.geometry), axis=1)
gpd1
    Name  ID     geometry  Nearest
0   John   1  POINT (1 1)     Home
1  Smith   1  POINT (2 2)    Shops
2   Soap   1  POINT (0 2)     Work

Explication

for i, row in gpd1.iterrows():
    print nearest_points(row.geometry, pts3)[0], nearest_points(row.geometry, pts3)[1]
 POINT (1 1) POINT (1 1.1)
 POINT (2 2) POINT (2.5 2)
 POINT (0 2) POINT (0 1.1)