Introduction to Quantum GIS This Class comes with a NRGS Level III Support. The Level III package is the most affordable package and is aimed at individual users. Basic includes 5 questions via email per month, Newsletter and Access to the supportWebsite Time frame is one year. Emails will be returned in 36 hours or less. References & Contributors http://www.qgis.org http://www.osgeo.org Randal Hale – North River Geographic Systems, Inc Carol Kraemer – North River Geographic Systems, Inc

1. Overview of GIS Geographic Information System Wikipedia definition - it is a system designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present all types of geographically referenced data. It is used in many applications: Small municipalities, forestry, military, commercial businesses, etc., etc., What do you do with it?

GIS Easily measure distances Easily measure areas Find overlap between features Proximity Everything is related by location. Tobler's Law The first law of geography according to Waldo Tobler is "Everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things."

Simple Maps Here's a small map showing access to a parcel. The parcel was collected with Survey. The roads were collected with GIS and with aerial imagery.

Outputs from a GIS Maps Printed Digital (PDF, JPEG Spreadsheets Databases Files Shapefiles KML The output to a GIS is a key element. It's all about the user and answering a question. Sometimes the answer isn't Geographic at all - it's a spreadsheet. It could be a nicely formatted map. It could be geographic data that feeds into more software. Understand what you need for the final output

2. Introduction to Quantum GIS Open Source – It comes with the right to download, run, copy, alter, and redistribute the software. With source code users have the option Suggest improvements Make improvements themselves Hire a professional to make the changes GRASS was developed at the US Army Corp of Engineers Construction Engineering Research Laboratory from 1980 to 1995. It was abandoned in 1995 and was saved because it was Open Sourced. A lot of closed source software finds a life as open source.

Common OS Licensing Licenses to run in both open and proprietary systems Apache Software License BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) License to run in open environments GPL (General Public License) LPGL (Lesser General Public License) MPL (Mozilla Public License) Read your license with your software. You will be very surprised at what you can and can't do with your software.

QGIS The QGIS project began in February, 2002 Produced by a Development team Gary Sherman, Founder The first release was in July of that year The first version supported only PostGIS and had no map navigation tools or layer control. QGIS started out as a simple data viewer. It grew and became an incubator project of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation.

QGIS is GPL GPL” stands for “General Public License”. The most widespread such license is the GNU General Public License, or GNU GPL for short. This can be further shortened to “GPL”, when it is understood that the GNU GPL is the one intended. Using the GNU GPL will require that all the released improved versions be free software. This means you can avoid the risk of having to compete with a proprietary modified version of your own work. There you go GPL'd Software. Install it as much as you want and if you so desire start working with the source code in some form or fashion.

3. Quantum GIS Interface If you've worked with commercial GIS applications the interface is pretty standard. Menus, toolbars, and windows that display data or display the layers with their names.

3. Adding Vector Data Supports OGR vector Formats Shapefiles KML CSV Microstation MapINFO QGIS supports all the OGR vector formats - anywhere from DGN to CAD to Shapefiles. Using OGR also gives QGIS the ability to translate between several different data formats. You can easily save data from shapefile to GPX. Vector data in QGIS is very flexible.

4. Adding Raster Data Supports OGR Raster Formats Geotiff ESRi Grid Jpeg Sid & ECW Format Read and not write the format Support must be added Included with standalone installer QGIS supports a tremendous amount of raster formats. The two that get most peoples attention are sid and ecw. Both of these are proprietary and in general wouldn't be included in qgis, but these two formats are everywhere. Users can't write these two formats. I would suggest using decompression software and moving these two formats to tif or jpg.

Geospatial Data Abstraction Library Approximately 128 Formats supported http://www.gdal.org Many command line tools Convert Reproject Warp Mosaic QGIS uses (as do many other commercial packages) GDAL. It allows users to convert data from different formats and project data to different coordinate systems. It ever support lunar image formats.

WMS – WFS Standards Web mapping service - The OpenGIS Web Map Service Interface Standard (WMS) provides a simple HTTP interface for requesting geo-registered map images from one or more distributed geospatial databases. Web Feature Service - Web Feature Service Interface Standard (WFS) provides an interface allowing requests for geographical features across the web using platform-independent calls WFS and WMS are two OGS standards that QGIS can handle. If you have an enterprise system in house currently you can share your data out through either a WMS or WFS and QGIS can read those data formats.

5. Plugins QGIS has a standard list of things that it does Buffers Projections Clips Unions Software needs to be extendable. You need to be able to add functionality as you want. Quantum is very lightweight. People write plugins to extend the functionality of QGIS.

Advanced Search SQL Query You can make alarmingly complicated SQL where clause statements just like in your favorite commercial GIS Software.

7. Creating new Data and Editing You can create new types of data in QGIS Shapefiles Spatialite Layer Layers contain basic Geometry shapes Points Lines Polygons Data Creation - I would encourage you if you're going to work solely QGIS to use spatialite. It's very robust. Data can easily be converted to shapefile (of DXF) when you need to share data.

Map Projections Geographic Coordinate Systems Defines locations on spherical model of the earth Projected Coordinate System Defines locations on flat model of the earth

Spatialite You can make a spatialite layer Very "similar" to ESRI's Geodatabase Format All files are kept in one file/database Can be accessed from a number of softwares QGIS Python GDAL Mapnik Cannot be accessed by ESRI Software.....yet. So like I had mentioned - Spatialite - https://www.gaia-gis.it/fossil/libspatialite/index . It's well worth spending some time to look over and get to know.

8. Map Layout The Map view can be exported with Map Composer. Composer Manager Multiple Map compositions can be stored. Map compositions can be exported to several different file formats PDF JPG TIFF Make a map. As someone once said "PDFs are where data goes to die". We all need to make some type of image or PDF for clients, customers, or bosses.

Map Composer Map Compositions can be saved (as a Template) Templates can be applied to new Map Compositions Compositions can have legend, Pictures, Scale bar. Maps are basic in QGIS. You can also save templates if you want to create a standard one to use for work.

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