The document discusses open source geographic information systems (GIS) software as an alternative to proprietary GIS software in education and application development. It provides an overview of open source GIS software such as QGIS and GRASS, their advantages for education including no licensing fees and ability to customize, and potential startup opportunities using open source GIS. Example open source GIS applications are also summarized such as R-ArcGIS, QGIS, GRASS, SAGA, GeoServer, and OpenLayers.

1. Welcome to
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Open Source GIS a paradigm shift
in GIS Education and application
development
Swaran Singh Jaggi, Email ID:swaran.jaggi@gmail.com
Contact: 9899336955

2. Objectives/Topic covered
1. Open source
2. Open source in education sector
3. Aadvantage of open source in education sector
4. Geospatial Technology
5. Open Source GIS software
6. Open Source GIS Application
7. Start-up possibilities using Open source GIS
software
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3. 1. What is open source?
Open source means a software for which
the original source code
is made freely available and
may be redistributed and modified.
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4. What is open source software?
Open source software (OSS) is software with source
code that anyone can
• use/inspect
– learn, copy, share
• modify
– improvise an algorithm, bug fixing
• enhance
– Add feature.
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5. OpenSource software In India
• In India NRCFOSS - National Resource Centre for
Free/Open Source Software
create by Ministry of communication and Information
Technology in April 2005
Example
• BOSS-Bharat Operating system solutions
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6. Advantages of open source
1. It’s generally free – it has been estimated that
open source software collectively saves
businesses $60 billion a year.
2. It’s continually evolving in real time as
developers add to it and modify it, which
means it can be better quality and more
secure and less prone to bugs than
proprietary systems.
3. Using open source software also means you
are free to use on any platform
4. You can modify and adapt open source
software for your own business requirements.
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7. Disadvantages of open source
1. Open source software depend more on
developers than the needs of the end user.
2. More technical and less user friendly
3. Less support available or paid support
4. open source software tends to rely on its
community of users to respond to and fix
problems.
4. Although the open source software itself is
mostly free, there may still be some indirect
costs involved, such as paying for external
support.
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8. Open source S/W Vs other types of S/W
• Proprietary (Closed source) software:
– Source code rights
– User agreement license
– E.g. Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop
• Open Source Software
– Source code available
– Rights with User
– License – Free
– E.g. LibreOffice and GNU Image Manipulation
Program
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9. Open Source in Education Sector
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10. Open source in education sector
• Share same philosophy
– openness,
– collaboration and
– interactive knowledge-sharing
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11. Impact of Open Source on Education-1
Educational institute: Strive to strike a balance between
resources and requirements
• Open source e-learning software
• Institute management software
• Administration management software
• Operating systems like Ubuntu, Lynix etc
• Academic learning software like QGIS, officelibre etc
have emerged as a viable solutions.
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12. Impact of Open Source on Education-2
1. Free Software: Most universities annually pay
large sums to software companies to use their
products, but open source licenses are free.
2. Flexibility: Open source products are
customizable and can involve third parties.
New features and tools can be imported from
the open source community.
3. Service continuity. The huge collaborative
network of the open source community
minimizes, although it does not eliminate, the
risk of discontinued service.
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13. Impact of Open Source on Education-2
4. Continuous improvement: Extensive
collaboration ensures that software products
keep improving. Programmers from different
institutions and organizations, along with
volunteers, contribute freely to projects.
5. Tax benefits. Governments of many countries
have implemented tax-exemption policies to
boost open source projects, although the
governmental role in promoting open source
software is controversial
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14. Open source enhance educational reach
Among the millennium development goals (MDG)
set forth by the United Nations (UN)
1. Increase access to education and
2. improving the quality of education
Initiatives that enable free, indiscriminate
accessibility and distribution (some of the open
source principles) of educational resources
enhance the possibility of realizing the goal set
by the UN.
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15. ITES i.e. Geospatial Technologies
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16. Geospatial Technologies
• GIS
• Remote Sensing
• Photogrammetry
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17. What is a GIS?
• System for storing and
retrieving geographic
information

18. What is GIS…
“GIS is a computer system capable of assembling, storing,
manipulating, and displaying geographically referenced
information, i.e. data identified according to their locations.”
Science of Geographical feature is called GIS --- Swaran Jaggi
A GIS is an organized collection of computer
hardware, software, geographic data, and personnel
to efficiently capture, store, update, manipulate,
analyze, and display all forms of geographically
referenced information.”

19. What is a GIS?
A geographic information system (GIS) is a
computer system for capturing, storing,
querying, analyzing, and displaying
geographically referenced data. Also called
geospatial data, geographically referenced
data are data that describe both the
location and characteristics of spatial
features such as roads, land parcels, and
vegetation stands on the Earth’s surface.

20. What is a GIS?
An integration of five basic components

21. GIS Functions
Capturing data
A GIS must provide methods for inputting geographic
(coordinate) and tabular (attribute) data. The more input
methods available, the more versatile the GIS.
Storing data
There are two basic data models for geographic data storage:
vector and raster. A GIS should be able to store geographic
data in both models.
Querying data
A GIS must provide utilities for finding specific features based
on location or attribute value

22. GIS Functions
Analyzing data
A GIS must be able to answer questions regarding the
interaction of spatial relationships between multiple datasets.
Displaying data
A GIS must have tools for visualizing geographic features using
a variety of symbology.
Output
A GIS must be able to display results in a variety of formats,
such as maps, reports, and graphs.

23. Advantages of GIS
•GIS allows us to view, understand, and visualize data in many
ways that reveal relationships, patterns, and trends in the
form of maps, globes, reports, and charts.
•A GIS helps you answer questions and solve problems by
looking at your data in a way that is quickly understood and
easily shared.
•GIS give the accurate Data, Better Predictions and Analysis.

24. Disadvantages of GIS
•Expensive software.
•Integration with traditional map is difficult.

25. Open Source Geospatial software - QGIS
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26. QGIS-Freedom in Geospatial World
Freedom
- to choose O/S
- of Licensing fee
- to customize
- to contribute to the development of QGIS

27. QGIS-History
•written by Gary Sherman in 2002
•Globally used and volunteer-led project
•In 2009 version 1 was released under OSGeo – Open Source
Geospatial Foundation

28. Why QGIS - 1
It’s free, as in lunch: Installing and using the QGIS program
costs you a grand total of zero money. No initial fee, no
recurring fee, nothing.
It’s free, as in liberty. If you need extra functionality in QGIS,
You can wait for next version
You can sponsor the development of a feature,
Add it yourself if you are familiar with programming.

29. Why QGIS - 2
It’s constantly developing: Because anyone can add new
features and improve on existing ones, QGIS never stagnates.
The development of a new tool can happen as quickly as you
need it to.
Extensive help and documentation is available: If you’re
stuck with anything, you can turn to the extensive
documentation, your fellow QGIS users, or even the
developers.

30. Why QGIS - 3
Cross-platform. QGIS can be installed on MacOS, Windows
and Linux.
Now that you know why you want to use QGIS, we can show
you how. The first lesson will guide you in creating your first
QGIS map.

31. Feature of QGIS
1. View Data
2. Explore Data and compose maps
3. Create, edit, manage and export data
4. Analyse data
5. Publish maps on internet
6. Extend QGIS functionality through plugins

32. View Data
You can view and overlay vector and raster data in different
formats and projections without conversion to an internal or
common format. Supported formats include:
• Spatially-enabled tables and views using PostGIS, SpatiaLite and
MS SQL Spatial, Oracle Spatial, vector formats supported by the
installed OGR library, including ESRI shapefiles, MapInfo, SDTS,
GML and many more. See section Working with Vector Data.
• Raster and imagery formats supported by the installed GDAL
(Geospatial Data Abstraction Library) library, such as GeoTIFF,
ERDAS IMG, ArcInfo ASCII GRID, JPEG, PNG and many more. See
section Working with Raster Data.
• GRASS raster and vector data from GRASS databases
(location/mapset). See section GRASS GIS Integration.
• Online spatial data served as OGC

33. Explore Data and compose maps
You can compose maps and interactively explore spatial data with a friendly GUI. The
many helpful tools available in the GUI include:
• QGIS browser
• On-the-fly reprojection
• DB Manager
• Map composer
• Overview panel
• Spatial bookmarks
• Annotation tools
• Identify/select features
• Edit/view/search attributes
• Data-defined feature labeling
• Data-defined vector and raster symbology tools
• Atlas map composition with graticule layers
• North arrow scale bar and copyright label for maps

34. Create, edit, manage and export data
You can create, edit, manage and export vector and raster layers in
several formats. QGIS offers the following:
• Digitizing tools for OGR-supported formats and GRASS vector layers
• Ability to create and edit shapefiles and GRASS vector layers
• Georeferencer plugin to geocode images
• GPS tools to import and export GPX format, and convert other GPS
formats to GPX or down/upload directly
to a GPS unit (On Linux, usb: has been added to list of GPS devices.)
• Support for visualizing and editing OpenStreetMap data
• Ability to create spatial database tables from shapefiles with DB
Manager plugin
• Improved handling of spatial database tables
• Tools for managing vector attribute tables
• Option to save screenshots as georeferenced images

35. Analyse data
You can perform spatial data analysis on spatial databases
and other OGR- supported formats. QGIS currently offers
vector analysis, sampling, geoprocessing, geometry and
database management tools. You can also use the integrated
GRASS tools, which include the complete GRASS functionality
of more than 400 modules. Or, you can work with the
Processing Plugin, which provides a powerful geospatial
analysis framework to call native and third-party algorithms
from QGIS, such as GDAL, SAGA, GRASS, fTools and more.

36. Publish maps on internet
QGIS can be used as a WMS, WMTS, WMS-C or WFS and
WFS-T client, and as a WMS, WCS or WFS server. Additionally,
you can publish your data on the Internet using a webserver
with UMN MapServer or GeoServer installed.

37. Extend QGIS functionality through plugins
QGIS can be adapted to your special needs with the
extensible plugin architecture and libraries that can be used
to create plugins. You can even create new applications with
C++ or Python!

38. Various option of QGIS
QGIS Desktop
QGIS Browser
QGIS Server
QGIS Web Client
QGIS on Android (beta!)

39. QGIS Desktop
Create, edit, visualise, analyse and publish geospatial
information.

40. QGIS Browser
Browse and preview your data and metadata.
Drag and drop your data from one data store into the other
one

41. QGIS Server
Publish your QGIS projects and layers as OGC compatible
WMS and WFS services. Control which layers, attributes,
layouts and coordinate systems are exported.
OGC= Open
Geospatial Consortium
WMS=wherehouse
management
System
WFS=Web Feature
Service

42. QGIs web Client
Publish your QGIS projects on the web with ease. Benefit
from the powerful symbology, labeling and blending features
to impress with your maps.

43. QGIS Android
Work is being done to use QGIS on Android devices. Current
builds are very experimental.

48. Aadvantage of open source in education
sector
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49. Open source in GIS education
1. Educators who teacher GIS as a part of
overall academics or a short term source
does not have required commercial software,
so they can cover the theoretical part of the
academics but when trying to who on GIS
software they need some software which
explain things well, at no cost and student
can install at home and do practice. The
open source allow all the above mentioned
points.
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50. Open source in GIS education
2. Teachers can install the
software at college lab and
students can use the same
software at home and even
they can develop applications
on top of that. so open source
range from learning to
development range.
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51. Open source in GIS education
3. Since open sour5ce works
on almost all operating
system, so whatever
operating system school is
having and student
personally using, the same
software runs on all.
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52. Open source in GIS education
4. Mostly commercial software work
as module form, e.g GIS functions
like database management, web
mapping, remote sensing, or
spatial analysis and if any
additional function is required we
need to buy expensive additional
modules.
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53. Open source in GIS education
5. if the teacher gives some
exercise at home, so
students can use the same
software at home and
complete the exercise. open
source gives the flexibility of
licence and ease to use.
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54. Open Source GIS Applications
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55. R-ArcGIS
• R is a programming language and software
environment for statistical computing and graphics
supported by the R Foundation for Statistical
Computing.
• R and its libraries implement a wide variety of
statistical and graphical techniques, including linear
and nonlinear modeling, classical statistical tests,
time-series analysis, classification, clustering, and
others.
• The R-ArcGIS Community, for example, is a
community-driven collection of free, open source
projects making it easier and faster for R users to
work with ArcGIS data, and ArcGIS users to
leverage the analysis capabilities of R.
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56. QGIS
• QGIS is a free and open source GIS software licensed
under the GNU General Public License.
• QGIS is an official project of the Open Source Geospatial
Foundation (OSGeo).
• It is a cross-platform GIS solution, supporting a variety of
operating systems like Linux, Mac OSX, Windows and
Android.
• QGIS allows users to create maps with many layers
using different projections and to view, edit and analyze
raster or vector data.
• QGIS also integrates with other open-source GIS
packages, including PostGIS, GRASS, and MapServer to
give users additional functionality. Plugins written in
Python or C++ extend QGIS’s capabilities. WynTech

57. GRASS
• The Geographic Resources Analysis Support
System (GRASS) is a free and open source GIS
software licensed under the GNU General
Public License.
• It is a cross-platform GIS solution, supporting a
variety of operating systems like Mac OSX,
Windows and Linux.
• It is used for GIS data management and
analysis, image processing, spatial and
temporal modeling and visualization.
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58. SAGA
The System for Automated Geoscientific
Analyses (SAGA)
• No Installation is required
• it runs on Windows, Linux and FreeBSD.
• Implementing geo-scientific methods using
API.
• It is used for geo-statistics, grid calculation,
projections, dynamic process simulation, and
terrain analysis.
• SAGA is maintained by an international
developer community. WynTech

59. GeoServer
• GeoServer is an open-source server written in Java
• It allows users to share, process and edit
geospatial data.
• Designed for interoperability, it publishes data from
any major spatial data source using open
standards.
• GeoServer has evolved to become an easy method
of connecting existing information to Virtual
Globes such as Google Earth and NASA World
Wind, as well as to web-based maps such as
OpenLayers, Google Maps and Bing Maps.
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60. OpenLayers
• OpenLayers is an open source (provided under
the 2-clause BSD License) JavaScript library for
displaying map data in web browsers.
• It provides an API for building rich web-based
geographic applications similar to Google Maps
and Bing Maps. OpenLayers supports GeoRSS,
Keyhole Markup Language (KML), Geography
Markup Language (GML), GeoJSON and map
data from any source using OGC-standards as
Web Map Service (WMS) or Web Feature
Service (WFS).
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61. MapServer
• MapServer is an open source platform for
publishing spatial data and interactive mapping
applications to the web.
• DevelopedOriginally developed in the mid-
1990s at the University of Minnesota,
MapServer is released under an MIT-style
license.
• It runs on all major platforms
(Windows, Linux, Mac OS X).
• MapServer is not a full-featured GIS system.
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62. OpenLayers
OpenLayers is an open source (provided under
the 2-clause BSD License) JavaScript library for
displaying map data in web browsers. It
provides an API for building rich web-based
geographic applications similar to Google Maps
and Bing Maps. OpenLayers supports GeoRSS,
Keyhole Markup Language (KML), Geography
Markup Language (GML), GeoJSON and map
data from any source using OGC-standards as
Web Map Service (WMS) or Web Feature
Service (WFS).
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63. Startup Using Open Source GIS
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64. GIS Applications
1. Customization
2. Standalone application development
3. Training and support
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65. Use of Geospatial Technology in Crime/Police
Effective Resource planning
• Manpower placement according to weighted requirement
• Online tracking of police personnel at critical location
Thana information system
• Geographical mapping of a District Police stations
• Real-time location of moving facilities like Jeep, petrol unites etc
• Integration of existing systems/solutions
• Various attribute information
Training
• Awareness of geospatial technology
• Use of geospatial technology with Policing
•
• Platform
• Open source technology
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