Book Image

Practical GIS

Book Image

Practical GIS

Overview of this book

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.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Dedication
Preface
14
Appendix

Outlining the problem


First of all, we need a scenario involving a problem for us to solve. In this chapter, we are decision makers looking for the best site for our business. We are supplying stores in multiple settlements scattered in our study area. More precisely, in every seat of the administrative division, we have stores to supply. We are looking for a site appropriate for holding our logistics center (that is, warehouse). As we will build the center, we do not need existing infrastructure on the site, although it should be economically feasible to build on it, and large enough to hold our 1 km2 building with some loading area to load and unload supplies. For the sake of simplicity, the shape of the building is not important, we are flexible enough to conform to the chosen site. Last, but not least, we don't need a single site. We need a list of the most suitable sites from which we can choose the best one for our business. Summarizing and expanding the preferences, we can get a nice...