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

Creating a map


Splendid work! We managed to make the most important part of a real map--the content, or data frame. However, there are some more cartographic elements to add if we would like to call our composition a map instead of a spatial visualization. Some of the usual cartographic elements are the following:

  • Data frame: It contains the main content of the map.
  • Title: A short, concise title summarizing the main thematics of the map.
  • Scale and scale bar: The scale of the map visualized with a scale bar and with a ratio number.
  • Legend: A graphic description for the thematics of the map. It is not mandatory when the map is not thematic. For example, a shaded relief (especially a hand-drawn greyscale one) does not need a legend.
  • Attribution: A list of sources used by the map followed by the name of the author, the copyright terms, if applied, and, at least, the year of creation.
  • North arrow: An arrow pointing to the North if the map is not oriented that way.
  • Frame: A small frame bounding the map...