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Table Of Contents

Practical GIS

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Practical GIS

Buy this Book

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.

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Free Chapter

Setting Up Your Environment

Understanding GIS

Setting up the tools

Collecting some data

Summary

Accessing GIS Data With QGIS

Accessing raster data

Accessing vector data

Understanding map scales

Summary

Using Vector Data Effectively

Using the attribute table

Selecting features in QGIS

Modifying the attribute table

Understanding data providers

Summary

Creating Digital Maps

Styling our data

Understanding projections

Preparing a map

Creating a map

Summary

Exporting Your Data

Creating a printable map

Sharing raw data

Summary

Feeding a PostGIS Database

A brief overview of databases

Importing layers into PostGIS

Visualizing PostGIS layers in QGIS

Summary

A PostGIS Overview

Customizing the database

Optimizing queries

Backing up our data

Summary

Spatial Analysis in QGIS

Preparing the workspace

Vector analysis

Building your models

Using digital elevation models

Summary

Spatial Analysis on Steroids - Using PostGIS

Delimiting quiet houses

Matching the rest of the criteria

Querying rasters

Summary

A Typical GIS Problem

Outlining the problem

Raster analysis

Using fuzzy techniques in GIS

Calculating statistics

Creating an atlas

Summary

Showcasing Your Data

Spatial data on the web

Using QGIS for publishing

Using GeoServer

Summary

Styling Your Data in GeoServer

Managing styles

Writing SLD styles

Using CSS in GeoServer

Summary

Creating a Web Map

Understanding the client side of the Web

Creating web maps with Leaflet

Working with Leaflet plugins

Summary

Appendix

Customizing the database

Most of the activities in this chapter will take place in the pgAdmin environment. We will learn how to utilize the convenient functionality it offers to create a nice, well-structured database without thinking of long commands. Of course, GUI operations cannot be automated, and using the CLI is generally faster (if we know exactly how to use it); therefore, we will also see those commands, as pgAdmin actually builds them from the options we include, and lets us see the result. First of all, let's see what pgAdmin has to show us if we open our database:

Don't worry if you use pgAdmin 4--it has more items to show. However, the ones we will use are present in both versions.

As shown in the preceding screenshot, we can see the hierarchical structure of PostgreSQL having extensions, schemas which contain tables and functions, and roles.

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Tech Concepts

Programming languages

Tech Tools