Software Options for Operational GIS in Professional
Environment
Free & Open Source Software (FOSS): Applications
& Technologies
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
Summary
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Major Software Platforms
Elements of individual Platforms
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Fully Integrative Software Platforms
Predominantly Image Analysis Software
Platforms
Issues to be considered
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
Major Platforms (not exhaustive)
Raster/Vector Integration
Image Analysis
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ESRI ArcGIS
Geomedia (Intergraph)
MapInfo (Pitney Bowes)
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IDRISI
Maptitude
•ENVI (ITT visuals)
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GRASS
AutoCAD
Microstation
•Google Earth
•ERDAS Imagine (Leica)
•Geomatica (PCI Geomatics)
•Definiens Professional
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
ESRI
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Market Leader
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Extensive Format Support
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Flexible Functionality for different
users
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Extensive Analysis Toolset
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Database Management of various
data types
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Extensive Support, Training, and
Knowledge Base
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Annual User Conference
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
GeoMedia
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Supports many data types
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Extensive Analysis Toolset
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Direct access to major
geospatial/CAD Data Formats
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Incorporates industry-standard
relational databases
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Regularly updated with full support
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Training
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
MapInfo
(Pitney Bowes Software)
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Mapping Functionality
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Limited GIS Functionality
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Traditionally Visual Basic
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Flexible Applications
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Global base
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Strong Dissemination Tool
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
IDRISI
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Open Code
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Single Packaged Product
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Sophisticated Raster based analysis
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Raster analysis toolset
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Extensive Vector-based data input
and output through CartaLinx
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
Geographic Resources Analysis Support System (GRASS)
GRASS 6.2
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Raster/Vector capabilities
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New topological 2D/3D vector
engine and support for vector
network analysis
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First UNIX GIS
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UNIX Functionality
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Open Code
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Global User Base
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
Maptitude
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Cad & GIS
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Import/Export options
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Address Matching Feature
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Suited for Readily
Available Datasets
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
AutoCAD Map
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Sophisticated GIS/CAD integration
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Grid, Projection, & Topology
Support
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Extensive Database options
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Vector/Raster display and Analysis
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Menu-based
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Costly
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
Microstation
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Largely US and European Use
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Cad-Based Mapping
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Limited Analysis Features
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Limited Data Format Integration
& Georeferencing
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Simple Google Earth/Google
SketchUp Interface
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
Image Analysis Software
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Major platforms -ERDAS Imagine (Leica), ENVI (ITT Solutions)
Geomatica (PCI Geomatics) & Definiens
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Google -for broad based applications
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Raster-based analysis becoming commonplace in census
mapping operations
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Many Image analysis software can integrate vector data for
refined image analysis
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Imagery becoming cheaper and faster to process and integrate
with existing vector datasets
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
ERDAS IMAGINE 9.1
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Raster-based software designed
to extract information from
images.
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Handles extensive collections of
geospatial data
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Provides client-side interaction
with spatially aware databases
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Extends to topological editing of
spatial databases
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Vector layer support
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
Geomatica (PCI Geomatics)
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Handles extensive collections of
geospatial data formats
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Provides client-side interaction with
spatially aware databases
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Full map production capabilities
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Attribute management tools for
viewing, editing, querying and
analysis of attributes
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Extensive image processing
capabilities
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
ENVI 4.3 (ITT Solutions)
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Integrates raster imagery with geographic information systems
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Vector layers can be overlaid onto image data, to easily compare
raster and vector information.
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Relatively extensive support & knowledge base
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Reads vector formats (ArcView shp, ARC/INFO interchange, DXF,
Microstation/Intergraph DGN files, USGS DLG files and more)
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Linear feature extractor automatically digitizes everything between
the seed points, faithfully following curves, jumping gaps, and
snapping vectors if desired
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
ENVI 4.3
Feature extraction tool can be used on any linear feature, from
roads to coastlines, and saves large amounts of time over
traditional point-by-point digitizing.
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
Definiens
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Highly sophisticated automated user defined feature extraction
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Extract geo-information from any kind of remote sensing imagery
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Data Management Connectivity to ArcGIS Server
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Load and save vector data to and from databases
Simultaneously update different locations of one large dataset
Update portions of large vector datasets
Extension for ArcGIS
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Allows ArcCatalog to define a collection of maps as a Definiens’
workspace
enables users to review and edit Definiens’ workspace entries
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
Definiens Enterprise Image Intelligence Suite
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
Google Earth
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Free Imagery! However… (Cost
associated feature upgrades)
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Global Coverage
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Democratizing Access
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User Friendly
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Large Knowledge Base
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Useful for Quick Display of
Raster & Vector Data
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
Google Earth
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Several External tools and
methods for image integration
into various GIS platforms exist
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Google Maps Image Downloader
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Georeference to Graticule
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Local Knowledge Control Points
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
Summary
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Many commercial suppliers exists
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Evaluate your goals within the census and adopt technologies
accordingly
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Evaluate the interoperability of software to best suit both current
and future needs
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Collaborate with different agencies and staff on the preferred
software platform
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An informed choice is the best choice!
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
Issues to be considered in system selection
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Cost
Upgrades
LAN configuration
Training needs/Workforce
Ease of installation
Maintenance
Documentation and manuals
Help-line and vendor support
Means of making patches for support
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Complex and Confusing Process: Savvy GIS consumer should
research, select, test, and question systems before a purchase is
made.
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
FOSS: Applications & Technologies
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Interoperability and Data Conversion
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The Geodatabase
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Desktop Mapping
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Geographical Analysis
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Web mapping
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GPS
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Conclusion
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
Free & Open Source (FOSS)
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Applications of which you can access the source code
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Similar functionality as commercial software
applications
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Becoming less IT oriented and more GUI friendly
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Provides useful information to users about the
construction of applications
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Provide the ability to learn how to construct tailored
applications for specific uses
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Allows for a more informed decision on what is needed
outside the free and open source environment
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
Interoperability
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Defined by the The Global Spatial Data Infrastructure
Association as…
• “The capability to communicate, execute programs,
or transfer data among various functional units in a
manner that requires the user to have little or no
knowledge of the unique characteristics of those
units.”
• [ISO 19118]
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
Interoperability & Data Conversion
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GDAL - Geospatial Data Abstraction Library
(www.gdal.org)
a translator library for raster geospatial data formats that is
released under an Open Source license by the Open Source
Geospatial Foundation. It comes with a variety of useful
command-line utilities for data translation and processing of
both raster and vector data
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Cartographic Projections library (remotesensing.org/proj)
Reprojection of rasters and vectors among different
coordinate systems and datum are managed by the PROJ
library. The precision is the same as for major commercial
software, and may be increased with slight adaptations of the
existing code. It includes several related resources as well
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
GDAL - Geospatial Data Abstraction Library
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
Cartographic Projections Library
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
Interoperability & Data Conversion
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Current Grids and Datums
(asprs.org/resources/GRIDS)
• Since September 1998, the Grids and Datums column from
each issue of PE&RS has been made available on the web
site.
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
Grids and Datums
(American Society for Photogrammetry & Remote
Sensing)
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
Geodatabase
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PostGIS (postgis.refractions.net)
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Allows the storage and management of geographical
vector data directly from within the database (thus using
standard SQL and its Open Geospatial Consortium
extensions: distance, area, buffer, overlay etc much like
ESRI's SDE or Oracle's Spatial extension)
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Every record is associated to a specific projection, thus
in the same database data in different projections can
coexist, and they'll be correctly overlayed
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
PostGIS
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
Geodatabase
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The data model is non-topological, and fully compliant to
Simple Feature specifications of OGC (SFS 1.1, SFS TF
1.1).
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Importing and exporting ESRI shapefile data is
straightforward. Raster geodatabase are not available.
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Users in Australia, British Columbia, Colorado, Portugal,
Virginia, Georgia, Switzerland, Florida, Chile,
Switzerland, Brazil, Sweden, Italy, Norway, New
Zealand, Germany, Sri Lanka…
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WFP and FAO
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
Desktop Mapping
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Historically had a significant gap compared to commercial
applications, because most GFOSS users were IT persons, more
inclined toward problem solving than to graphical appearance
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In the last few years, thanks also to a larger user base, the
situation has vastly improved
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QuantumGIS (http://qgis.org)
• most advanced raster vector image and data display and
manipulation
Thuban (http://thuban.intevation.org)
• Vector-based; strong limitations in the handling of rasters
OpenEV (http://openev.sourceforge.net)
• powerful in image analysis -not easy for the unexperienced
user
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Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
Quantum GIS
or
QGIS
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
QGIS Interface
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
GRASS
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Short for Geographic Resources Analysis Support System
Historically known as a raster GIS, difficult to use, mainly
command-line oriented. Since 2002 it has known a heavy
development; the 2D and 3D vector section, as well as the
database integration, have been completely rewritten, and it is
now available as a new (6.0) stable version.
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Very complete, with all functions required for a professional
use, from management and analysis of geospatial data to image
analysis, from chart and maps production to spatial modelling
and 2D, 2,5D, and full 3D visualization; a complete list of the
>350 modules (many of which with several options, giving a
total of more than 600 commands
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Can Be Accompanied with R statistical package
(http://www.r-project.org) and a flow through with QGIS
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
GRASS
Interface
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
Map Server Applications
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Definition: Web Map Server-A service that can produce maps
drawn into a standard image format (PNG, GIF, JPEG, etc).
(GSDI Association ) based on a standard set of input parameters
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The first Mapserver (also called UMN Mapserver:
http://ms.gis.umn.edu) has been developed originally by the
University of Minnesota. It is OGC compliant (WMS 1.1.0, WMS 1.0.0,
WMC 1.0, WFS 1.0.0, SLD 1.0, GML 2.0, Filter 1.0.0, WMS 1.1.1)
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Examples include pmapper (http://pmapper.sourceforge.net),
Chameleon (http://chameleon.maptools.org) and Cartoweb
(http://www.cartoweb.org)
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With these tools, customized map server applications can be
built in a very cost-effective way
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
http://ms.gis.umn.edu
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
http://ms.gis.umn.edu
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
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p.mapper
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p.mapper
& Mapserver
http://webgrs.wur.nl/cgi/Miscellaneous/EthioAtlas
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Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
GPS (Free & Open Source)
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Global Positioning System receivers are very useful and
widespread;
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Many free programs are available for interacting with GPS
hardware, from single-purpose command-line downloading
programs (e.g. gpstrans: http://gpstrans.sourceforge.net) to
the more sophisticated ones, with graphical interface and
conversion tools (e.g. gpsbabel:
http://gpsbabel.sourceforge.net);
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Some have real-time navigation application (e.g. gpsdrive:
http://www.gpsdrive.cc) or differential correction
(dgpsip:http://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/gps/dgps-ip.html).
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
GPS data integration
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Easy integration among different tools, characteristic of
open source programs, allows larger programs like
GRASS and QGIS to – and upload points and tracks
straight from/to the devices.
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In the case of GRASS, data are reprojected
automatically in the working projection and converted to
the GRASS vector format.
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
GPStrans
GPStrans allows waypoint data to be transferred to and from a Garmin GPS)
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
GPS
Babel
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
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Differential GPS Correction
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
FOSS: Online Resources
•Open Source Geospatial Foundation: http://www.osgeo.org
•Geonetwork Opensource Community
http://geonetwork-opensource.org
•The FreeGIS Project: http://www.freegis.org
•Map Tools & Utilities: http://maptools.org
•Open Source GIS: http://opensourcegis.org
•Remote Sensing Open Source Support:
http://remotesensing.org
•Open Source Geospatial Consortium:
http://www.opengeospatial.org/
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
OOpen Source Geospatial Foundation: http://www.osgeo.org
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
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TThe FreeGIS
Project:
http://www.freegis.org
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
Map Tools & Utilities:
http://maptools.org
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22-26 October 2007
OOpen Source GIS:
http://opensourcegis.org
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22-26 October 2007
RRemote Sensing Open
Source Support:
http://remotesensing.org
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
OOpen
GGeospatial
CConsortium:
http://www.opengeospatial
.org/
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
Concluding Remarks
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Several products are mature and ready for professional use,
whereas others, while usable, need further development to be
really competitive (setting aside the cost of acquisition):
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UMN Mapserver is fully functional; it does not have significant
limitations, and in several respects it is superior to its
commercial counterparts
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PostgreSQL+PostGIS as a relational geodatabase is a very
reliable and powerful solution, and has already replaced
commercial top-end solutions
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
Cont.
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For geographic analyses, GRASS is fully functional, stable and
very powerful. In many situations (where money is an issue:
underfunded universities and public administrations, small or
heavily competing companies, etc.) it is the best alternative to the
(unfortunately very common) illegal use of (cracked or stolen)
proprietary software. Its inherent qualities, however, allow its use
also in large and more complex settings
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Desktop mapping (and in particular QGIS) is usable, but still young;
some more months of development will be necessary to make it
more stable and powerful
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
Open Source Contributions?
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007
Cont.
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What are the costs for Upgrades of hardware or/and existing software?
Is a LAN configuration needed?
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What are the staff training needs/ Is the existing workforce adequate?
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What is the ease and difficulty as far as installation of hardware/software as well as
maintenance?
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What infrastructure documentation, manuals, Help-line, and vendor support (patches
etc.)?
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago,
22-26 October 2007