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Accessing GIS Data With QGIS

Despite the fact that some of the advanced GIS software suggest, we only need to know which buttons to press in order to get instant results, GIS is much more than that. We need to understand the basic concepts and the inner workings of a GIS in order to know the kind of analyses we can perform on our data. We must be able to come up with specific workflows, models which get us the most meaningful results. We also need to understand the reference frame of GIS, how our data behaves in such an environment, and how to interpret those results. In this chapter, we will learn about GIS data models by browsing our data in QGIS, and getting acquainted with its GUI.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

Graphical User Interface of QGIS
Opening spatial data in QGIS
GIS data models

Key benefits

This easy-to-follow guide allows you to manage and analyze geographic data with ease using open source tools

Publish your geographical data online

Learn the basics of geoinformatics in a practical way by solving problems

Description

The most commonly used GIS tools automate tasks that were historically done manually—compiling new maps by overlaying one on top of the other or physically cutting maps into pieces representing specific study areas, changing their projection, and getting meaningful results from the various layers by applying mathematical functions and operations. This book is an easy-to-follow guide to use the most matured open source GIS tools for these tasks. We’ll start by setting up the environment for the tools we use in the book. Then you will learn how to work with QGIS in order to generate useful spatial data. You will get to know the basics of queries, data management, and geoprocessing. After that, you will start to practice your knowledge on real-world examples. We will solve various types of geospatial analyses with various methods. We will start with basic GIS problems by imitating the work of an enthusiastic real estate agent, and continue with more advanced, but typical tasks by solving a decision problem. Finally, you will find out how to publish your data (and results) on the web. We will publish our data with QGIS Server and GeoServer, and create a basic web map with the API of the lightweight Leaflet web mapping library.

What you will learn

Collect GIS data for your needs

Store the data in a PostGIS database

Exploit the data using the power of the GIS queries

Analyze the data with basic and more advanced GIS tools

Publish your data and share it with others

Build a web map with your published data

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