The document provides an overview of open source GIS software and formats. It discusses what open source software is, common open source licenses, where to find open source GIS software, how to evaluate software quality, and examples of popular open source desktop and web-based GIS programs, databases, data formats, and programming languages. Key open source GIS software mentioned includes QGIS, GRASS, PostGIS, MapServer, and OpenLayers. Common data formats discussed are shapefiles, GeoJSON, KML and GPS eXchange format.

1. Saving Money Using
Open Source Software
Bryan Luman
bryanluman@gmail.com

2. What is Open Source
Software?
http://notinventedhe.re/on/2010-10-13

3. Wikipedia Says...
Open-source software (OSS) is computer
software that is available in source code form
for which the source code and certain other
rights normally reserved for copyright holders
are provided under a software license that
permits users to study, change, and improve
the software.

4. What does that
mean to me?
• FREE!
• You can make changes to the software
• You can learn from experienced coders
• Oh, yeah... FREE!

5. Types of Licenses
GPL MPL
Artistic license
LGPL MIT
Apache Creative Commons
Public Domain BSD
CDDL Eclipse

6. http://www.opensource.org

7. (so don’t sue me)
• Check with your lawyer if you are unsure
• JUST AS YOU SHOULD WITH ANY
DEAL!
• Example: RFP’s, Microsoft CAL’s, developer
licenses.

8. End of Scary Legal Stuff

9. Where do I find it?

10. How do I know
if it’s good?

11. Recently updated?

12. Good documentation?

13. How many people maintain it?
Not a
good
choice

14. Active Community?

15. Are there companies
selling support?

16. Books?

17. Buzz?

18. OK so what do
I use?

19. Obligatory ESRI
Reference
Text
http://www.python.org/

20. Programming Language
of Choice
http://www.ruby-lang.org
def greet
puts "Hello world"
end

21. http://rubyonrails.org/

22. http://www.sinatrarb.com/

23. http://jquery.com/

24. http://www.postgresql.org/

25. http://www.sqlite.org/

26. http://www.mongodb.org/

27. http://nginx.org/

28. http://www.imagemagick.org
Text

29. GET TO THE GIS
SOFTWARE!!!

30. Desktop
Apps

31. uDig
http://udig.refractions.net/
• Uses Eclipse GUI
• Reads most standard GIS formats
(PostGIS, shapefile, WMS, WFS, WCS,
GeoRSS, KML, and images)
• Limited map making ability
• Simple editing is OK

34. GRASS
http://grass.osgeo.org
• One of the first GIS systems
• Initially developed by US ArmyConstruction
Engineering Research Laboratory in
Champaign, IL
• Incredible powerful for geoprocessing both
raster and vector
• Gives ArcInfo 7 a run for it’s money on the
UI (i.e. not good)

37. Quantum GIS
http://www.qgis.org/
• Good middle ground
• Reasonably decent UI
• Power of GRASS
• Almost comparable to ArcView
• Before you buy another license at least give
this a try

40. Databases

41. PostGIS
http://postgis.refractions.net/
• Nearly part of the PostgreSQL core
• Based off well documented standards
(OGC)
• Fast and Stable
• Large community developing and
documenting

42. MySQL Spatial
Extensions
• Incomplete and not well documented
• Not recommended unless you MUST use
MySQL

43. Spatialite
http://www.gaia-gis.it/spatialite/
• Uses much of the same guts as PostGIS
• Based on SQLite so very small and portable
• Possible exchange format
• Can use on iOS devices (GIS on your
phone)
• A little young

44. Most SQL vendors implement geography
using a version of the:
OpenGIS Implementation Specification for
Geographic information - Simple feature access
http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/sfs

45. Data Formats

46. Most Common
• ESRI Shapefile
• De facto standard
• Documented by ESRI
http://www.esri.com/library/whitepapers/pdfs/shapefile.pdf

47. Well Known Text (WKT)
&
Well Known Binary (WKB)
• Used in database records
• Well documented
• Compact

48. Example
POINT(6 10) =
010100000000000000000018400000000000002440
LINESTRING(3 4,10 50,20 25) =
01020000000300000000000000000008400000000000001040000000
00000024400000000000004940000000000000344000000000000039
40

49. GML
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Geography_Markup_Language
• OGC/ISO Standard
• Encoded in XML and like XML can be used
for good or evil
• Most other open formats take their cue
from this format

50. Example
<gml:Point gml:id="p21" srsName="urn:ogc:def:crs:EPSG:6.6:4326">
<gml:coordinates>45.67, 88.56</gml:coordinates>
</gml:Point>

51. GeoJSON
http://geojson.org
• JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)
encoded
• Very similar to GML but a little more
streamlined
• Different than the ESRI JSON format

52. Example
{ "type": "Point", "coordinates": [100.0, 0.0] }
{ "type": "Polygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[100.0, 0.0], [101.0, 0.0], [101.0, 1.0],
[100.0, 1.0], [100.0, 0.0]
]
]
}

53. GeoRSS
http://georss.org
• Essentially a streamlined version of GML
• Used in RSS feeds
• Used by Yahoo in a lot of data streams

54. Example
<georss:point>
45.256 -71.92
</georss:point>

55. KML
http://code.google.com/apis/kml/documentation
• Initially developed for Keyhole (Keyhole
Markup Language) which was changed to
Google Earth after being acquired
• As it’s name implies this is a markup
language and is more suited to presenting
GIS data than exchanging it
• Now an open standard and supported by
Google Earth, NASA Worldwind, and ESRI

56. Example
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<kml xmlns="http://www.opengis.net/kml/2.2">
<Placemark>
<name>Simple placemark</name>
<description>Attached to the ground. Intelligently places itself
at the height of the underlying terrain.</description>
<Point>
<coordinates>-122.0822035425683,37.42228990140251,0</coordinates>
</Point>
</Placemark>
</kml>

57. GPX
http://www.topografix.com/gpx.asp
• GPS eXchange Format
• XML based
• Fairly easy to read and write
• Lots of support in consumer GPS devices

58. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no" ?>
<gpx ...>
<metadata>
<link href="http://www.garmin.com">
<text>Garmin International</text>
</link>
<time>2009-10-17T22:58:43Z</time>
</metadata>
<trk>
<name>Example GPX Document</name>
<trkseg>
<trkpt lat="47.644548" lon="-122.326897">
<ele>4.46</ele>
<time>2009-10-17T18:37:26Z</time>
</trkpt>
<trkpt lat="47.644548" lon="-122.326897">
<ele>4.94</ele>
<time>2009-10-17T18:37:31Z</time>
</trkpt>
<trkpt lat="47.644548" lon="-122.326897">
<ele>6.87</ele>
<time>2009-10-17T18:37:34Z</time>
</trkpt>
</trkseg>
</trk>
</gpx>

59. Image Formats
(some)
BMP MrSID
JP2
GeoJPG PNG
ERMapper
GeoTIFF
NITF
PCI
And many more!!!
USGS DEM DOQ
ECW NetCDF
Erdas Imagine ESRI GRID

60. GDAL/OGR
http://www.gdal.org/
• Swiss army knife of GIS!
• Converts, slices and dices data anyway you
like
• Really fast!
• Used in a bunch of OS and commercial
applications
• Using ArcGIS? - You are already using
GDAL

61. Web Mapping

62. Openlayers
http://openlayers.org/
• Only totally open, full featured, web map
viewer
• Well documented
• Can be used with ESRI ArcGIS Server as
well as many other data sources WMS,
WFS, GeoRSS, etc...

63. MapServer
http://mapserver.org/
• Original open source web mapping solution
• Akin to ESRI ArcIMS... will lead you into
madness with it’s broken HTML
• Using just the map rendering capability is
OK

64. Mapnik
http://mapnik.org/
• Beautiful Rendering
• Exceptionally difficult to compile
• May be a little slow compared to
MapServer
• Used by Google and Apple

65. Tilecache
http://tilecache.org/
• Nice small python web service
• Will serve tiles ala Google Maps statically
or on demand
• Lots of options for increasing web serving
performance (memcached, HTTP headers)

66. GeoDjango
http://geodjango.org/
• Django is a python web framework for
designing applications quickly
• This is a very nice extension that adds a
variety of methods for interacting with
spatial data using PostGIS, GEOS, and
PROJ4

67. Free but not open
• Google Earth
• Google Maps
• Microsoft Bing
• Yahoo Maps
• Mapquest

68. http://lakecountyil.gov

69. Other Cool Geo API’s
• 4Square
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Flickr

70. Open Streetmap
http://www.openstreetmap.org/
• Totally open dataset of features
• Based on TIGER (in USA) and updated by
individuals
• Variable precision
• Excellent cartography
• Made using open source GIS software

71. EveryBlock
http://everyblock.com
• Second evolution of ChicagoCrime.org
• Excellent User Interface
• Uses Openlayers and Mapnik

73. Warning!
Extreme Technical
Content ahead!

74. libLAS
http://liblas.org
• Library and executables
• Can convert raw LAS to a variety of
formats using advanced filtering
• Can get detailed info and compare LAS files
• Supported by Iowa DNR and US Army

75. GEOS
http://trac.osgeo.org/geos/
• Geometry Engine, Open Source (GEOS)
• Backbone of PostGIS and Spatialite
• Also used in Quantum GIS, GRASS, OGR,
Ingres, MapServer, and GeoDjango

76. PROJ
http://trac.osgeo.org/proj/
• Library and executable
• Will project to and from anything
• Used in almost all OS GIS projects

77. A little note about
projections

78. EPSG/WKID Codes
http://www.epsg.org/Geoodetic.html
• European Petroleum Survey Group (EPSG)
initially developed a list of projections for
easy reference
• Also known as Well Known ID’s (WKID)
• A good searchable index is:
spatialreference.org

79. EPSG:3435
vs
PROJCS["NAD83 / Illinois East (ftUS)",
GEOGCS["NAD83",
DATUM["North_American_Datum_1983",
SPHEROID["GRS 1980",6378137,298.257222101,
AUTHORITY["EPSG","7019"]],
AUTHORITY["EPSG","6269"]],
PRIMEM["Greenwich",0,
AUTHORITY["EPSG","8901"]],
UNIT["degree",0.01745329251994328,
AUTHORITY["EPSG","9122"]],
AUTHORITY["EPSG","4269"]],
UNIT["US survey foot",0.3048006096012192,
AUTHORITY["EPSG","9003"]],
PROJECTION["Transverse_Mercator"],
PARAMETER["latitude_of_origin",36.66666666666666],
PARAMETER["central_meridian",-88.33333333333333],
PARAMETER["scale_factor",0.999975],
PARAMETER["false_easting",984250.0000000002],
PARAMETER["false_northing",0],
AUTHORITY["EPSG","3435"],
AXIS["X",EAST],
AXIS["Y",NORTH]]