Free
&
Open Source Software (FOSS):
Applications
&
Technologies
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
FOSS: Applications & Technologies
Summary
•
Introduction
•
Interoperability and Data Conversion
•
The Geodatabase
•
Desktop Mapping
•
Geographical Analysis
•
Web mapping
•
GPS
•
Conclusion
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
Free & Open Source (FOSS)
•
Applications of which you can access the source code
•
Similar functionality as commercial software
applications
•
Becoming less IT oriented and more GUI friendly
•
Provides useful information to users about the
construction of applications
•
Provide the ability to learn how to construct tailored
applications for specific uses
•
Allows for a more informed decision on what is needed
outside the free and open source environment
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
Interoperability
•
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, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
Interoperability & Data Conversion
•
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 commandline utilities for data
translation and processing of both raster and vector data
•
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, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
Interoperability & Data Conversion
•
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, Bangkok, Thailand, 15–19 October 2007
GDAL - Geospatial Data Abstraction Library
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
Cartographic Projections Library
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
Grids and Datums
(American Society for Photogrammetry & Remote
Sensing)
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
Geodatabase
•
PostGIS (postgis.refractions.net)
•
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)
•
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, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
Geodatabase
•
The data model is non-topological, and fully compliant to
Simple Feature specifications of OGC (SFS 1.1, SFS TF
1.1).
•
Importing and exporting ESRI shapefile data is
straightforward. Raster geodatabase are not available.
•
Users in Australia, British Columbia, Colorado, Portugal,
Virginia, Georgia, Switzerland, Florida, Chile,
Switzerland, Brazil, Sweden, Italy, Norway, New
Zealand, Germany, Sri Lanka…
•
WFP and FAO
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
PostGIS
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
Desktop Mapping
•
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
•
In the last few years, thanks also to a larger user base, the
situation has vastly improved
•
QuantumGIS (http://qgis.org)
• most advanced raster vector image and data display and
manipulation
Thuban (http://thuban.intevation.org)
• strong limitations in the handling of rasters
OpenEV (http://openev.sourceforge.net)
• powerful in image analysis -not easy for the unexperienced
user
•
•
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
Quantum GIS
or
QGIS
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
QGIS Interface
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
Geographical Analysis
•
•
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.
•
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
•
Can Be Accompanied with R statistical package
(http://www.r-project.org) and a flow through with QGIS
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
GRASS
Interface
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
Map Server Applications
•
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
•
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)
•
Examples include pmapper (http://pmapper.sourceforge.net),
Chameleon (http://chameleon.maptools.org) and Cartoweb
(http://www.cartoweb.org)
•
With these tools, customized map server applications can be
built in a very cost-effective way
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
http://ms.gis.umn.edu
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
http://ms.gis.umn.edu
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
p.mapper
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
p.mapper
& Mapserver
http://webgrs.wur.nl/cgi/Miscellaneous/EthioAtlas
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
GPS (Free & Open Source)
•
Global Positioning System receivers are very useful and
widespread;
•
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 sphisticated ones, with graphical interface and
conversion tools (e.g. gpsbabel:
http://gpsbabel.sourceforge.net);
•
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, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
GPS data integration
•
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.
•
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, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
gpstrans
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
GPS
Babel
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
Differential GPS Correction
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
FOSS: Online Resources
•Open Source Geospatial Foundation: http://www.osgeo.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, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
Open Source Geospatial Foundation: http://www.osgeo.org
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
The FreeGIS Project:
http://www.freegis.org
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
Map Tools & Utilities:
http://maptools.org
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
Open Source GIS:
http://opensourcegis.org
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
Remote Sensing Open
Source Support:
http://remotesensing.org
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
Open Source
Geospatial
Consortium:
http://www.opengeospatial
.org/
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
Conclusion
•
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):
•
UMN Mapserver is fully functional; it does not have
significant limitations, and in several respects it is superior
to its commercial counterparts
•
PostgreSQL+PosGIS 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, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007
Conclusion
•
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
•
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, Bangkok, Thailand, 15–19 October 2007
Open Source Contributions?
Workshop on Census Cartography and Management, Lusaka, Zambia, 08–12 October 2007