Desktop tools

Geospatial analysis requires the ability to visualize output in order to be complete. This fact makes tools, which can visualize data absolutely critical to the field. There are two categories of geospatial visualization tools. The first is geospatial viewers and the second is geospatial analysis software. The first category, geospatial viewers, allows you to access, query, and visualize data but not edit data in any way. The second category allows you to perform those items as well but also edit data. The main advantage of viewers is that they are typically lightweight pieces of software that launch and load data quickly. Geospatial analysis software requires far more resources to be able to edit complex geospatial data, so it loads slower and often renders data more slowly to provide dynamic editing functionality.

Quantum GIS

Quantum GIS, more commonly known as QGIS, is a complete open source geographic information system. QGIS falls well within the geospatial analysis category...