Contributors
About the authors
Shammunul Islam is a consulting spatial data scientist at the Institute of Remote Sensing, Jahangirnagar University, and a senior consultant at ERI, Bangladesh. He develops applications for automating geospatial and statistical analysis in different domains such as in the fields of the environment, climate, and socio-economy. He also consults as a survey statistician and provides corporate training on data science to businesses. Shammunul holds an MA in Climate and Society from Columbia University, an MA in development studies, and a BSc in statistics.
Simon Miles is a GIS/web developer working for the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, and has been working in the GIS industry since 2003. Both in the office and at home, he works using open source technologies. His main kit or stack includes QGIS, PostGIS, Python, GDAL, Leaflet, JavaScript, and PHP. His main focus presently is on digital delivery/transformation, chiefly through the consolidation of data, applications, and legacy systems, and replacing these with APIs and web applications. In 2013, Simon helped to establish the UK QGIS user group, which holds regional meetings two or three times a year.
Kurt Menke, GISP, a former Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA-based archaeologist, has an MS in geography from the University of New Mexico in 2000. He has founded Bird's Eye View to apply his expertise with GIS technology toward ecological conservation. His other focus areas are public health and education. He is an avid GIS proponent since he began writing MapServer applications in 2002. He has authored Discover QGIS. In 2015, Kurt was voted in as an OSGeo Charter Member. He is a FOSS4G educator and a co-author of the GeoAcademy. In 2015, he was awarded the Global Educator of the Year Team Award by GeoForAll as part of the GeoAcademy team. He authors an award-winning blog on FOSS4G technologies and their use in community health mapping.
Richard Smith Jr., GISP, is an assistant professor of geographic information science in the School of Engineering and Computing Sciences at Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi. He has a Ph.D. in geography from the University of Georgia and holds an MSc in computer science and a BSc in geographic information science from Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. Richard actively researches in cartography, systems integration, and the use of geospatial technology for disaster response. He is an advocate for FOSS4G and building a FOSS4G curriculum. He is also one of the co-authors of the FOSS4G Academy.
Luigi Pirelli is a QGIS core developer and software analyst with a degree in computer science from Bari University. He worked for 15 years in the Satellite Ground Segment and Direct Ingestion for the European Space Agency. He is also involved in GFOSS world, contributing in QGIS, GRASS, & MapServer core, and developing and maintaining many QGIS plugins. Luigi is the founder of the OSGEO Italian local GFOSS chapter. He has taught PyQGIS, delivering training from basic to advanced levels, and supporting companies to develop their own specific QGIS plugins. He founded a local hackerspace group. Bricolabs.cc. He likes training groups on conflict resolution. Other than this book, he has also contributed to the Lonely Planet guide Cycling Italy.
John Van Hoesen, GISP, is an associate professor of geology and environmental studies at Green Mountain College in rural west-central Vermont, USA. He earned an MS and a Ph.D. in geology from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in 2000 and 2003. He is a certified GISP with a broad background in the geosciences and has used some flavor of GIS to evaluate and explore geological processes and environmental issues since 1997. John has used and taught graduate, undergraduate, and continuing education courses using some variants of FOSS GIS since 2003.
About the reviewers
Giuseppe De Marco, a Ferentino based agricultural engineer, has a Bachelor's in agriculture from the University of Pisa. He started programming at an early age. He developed deep interests in geography and GIS during his bachelor’s. He then got introduced to GRASS and QGIS while working with Eris commercial products. Since QGIS 1.7.4, he has been developing plugins for it, In 2008, he partnered with his 2 colleagues and started Pienocampo (open field), a website that hosts plugins made by him which are also hosted on OGIS official repository. He likes studying geography, surveying, tree risk assessment, landscaping, bioengineering, and farm consulting. He also likes imparting knowledge on how to use QGIs and other open source software.
Chima Obi is the lead geospatial analyst at AGERPoint Inc. He has over 4 years of experience as a geospatial analyst. His specialty includes processing LIDAR data and feature extraction from raster/imagery data utilizing Python and R programing, as well as exploring other open source geospatial tools. He got his Bachelors in soil science from the Federal University of Technology, Owerri, Nigeria in 2010. He moved to the United States where he obtained his master’s degree in environmental science and got a certification in Geospatial information systems in 2016. Prior to working at AGERPoint, he worked as a geospatial analyst at West Virginia District of Highways in 2015 and 2016.
I would like to express my gratitude to my friends and family, and most importantly to my wife, for their wonderful encouragement and support. Also, my biggest thanks go to Packt Publishing for choosing me to be a part of this awesome book review.
Packt is searching for authors like you
If you're interested in becoming an author for Packt, please visit authors.packtpub.com and apply today. We have worked with thousands of developers and tech professionals, just like you, to help them share their insight with the global tech community. You can make a general application, apply for a specific hot topic that we are recruiting an author for, or submit your own idea.