 Hello everyone, welcome to remote sensing and GIS for rural development NPTEL course. This is week four lecture one. Let's quickly look at what we have been looking at in the past weeks and how it connects to this week because we are starting a new lecture. Up to week three, we were looking at various remote sensing open source data. Some Indian sources example women and some foreign sources example NASA were discussed. And we looked at specifically data for water, soil and climate. These would be incorporated into rural development schemes. And once you know to retrieve these important data, water, soil and climate, you could also retrieve the other less complex data such as images, land use, land cover, etc. Then we also stopped on the need for GIS and this very short intro for QGIS was given. The need for GIS comes again from understanding that we have plethora of data, satellites, remote sensing, near sensing, crowd sourcing data. We need to convert that into a usable format and the platform that helps us to achieve this is GIS. There are multiple GIS platforms, but we want to promote through this lecture series an open source software and the one we have identified is QGIS. It is one of the largest open source mapping software used in the world and even governments are using as I mentioned. So we will in this week, we will give a more in-depth introduction to GIS while installing the QGIS software. The installation takes approximately 45 minutes if we have good internet. So we won't do the entire process because the lecture is 30 minutes. We will show snapshots of how to download, how to install and then put it on your system. Then we will discuss the different data types in QGIS and GIS, especially vectors and rasters. In this week, we will look at vectors as an analysis tool and some applications using vector data. So let's get into this week's core content. What is GIS? If you expand it, it is geographic information systems and it is a computer based tool for analyzing, collecting, formatting, modeling of geographic or spatial data. This is not normal data. These are specific data with a spatial allocation to it. And this software allows you to overlay different data sets and query them in terms of their spatial relation between each other. For example, if I have a layer of land use land cover and I say this is Mumbai and I have urban settlements, I can also put road network on it. I can put schools, I can put colleges, so you can stack it up like a cake. Now we can assess how far the distance is from the school to the nearest main road or the school to the nearest highway. So this kind of analysis is possible once you layer the data on top of each other and query. For layering, the key ingredient which holds the layers together is the spatial location. So if you know that that's why I said Mumbai, so I'm going to have a map of Mumbai. All the layers are of Mumbai. I cannot put Chennai on top of Mumbai because there is no spatial relationship. So that spatial relation we are trying to establish here. And that tool is what differentiates it from a normal table data or a normal data that you write in books. So these are different because this has spatial location on it. So the most important I would say from this is spatial data and modeling, analyzing, managing etc. One more definition of what is GIS. It is an information system which has geospatial information. And if you look at as a software, what is GIS software? It is a software that lets you to manipulate, convert, reformat data and manage spatial data. This word manage is very important because data can be scattered in different locations and to truncate it to one district, one zone, you need to manage it and that management can happen in GIS. The beauty is once you do it with GIS and save it as a map, then all the layers, all the layers that you stacked will be saved with a path file. So you don't have to go each time and collect data and put it in. Once you open the map, all the data will come together. Essentially, it is merging of statistical analysis, database management and digital cartography. There's a lot of analysis that you can do with GIS, especially statistical analysis. And then there is database management. As I said, data can be in different locations and formats, but when you convert it to one layer and top and top of layer, then it is easy to manage and that is what we use for digital cartography. The final one we could say is it is a software, it is a combination of software, hardware, that's why it's called a system. If we just say GIS is a system, it includes a computer software, which is QGIS for example, and then it includes your hardware, which is your computer, your scanner, etc., data. So with the software and the hardware, there is a data that comes in and the person, the GIS user. All these have to come for a GIS system because the user controls what data comes and the user controls the software and what tools to use in the software. Then you manipulate, analyze and present the information as a spatial location. So here the different terms here are spatial location is a geographic location. As I said Chennai is a city, it's a location, it has latitude and if I pin data to Chennai, it is anchored in Chennai. Information is visualization of analysis of data. You are visualizing data in GIS, it is put as maps, numbers are there, it's not put as tables that we have different software, here we put as maps. The system is what links everything together like software and hardware and the person, as I said, is us who are learning GIS and using GIS. He, she is the key to the power of GIS because it is a very creative tool. Suppose you have a paintbrush and I give you a canvas. The canvas is your GIS software and hardware monitor, but it is you who wants to drive, you who want to paint and draw what you want. And that is the importance of the creativity, the personal is the importance of GIS applications. Let's ask this question, which I ask a lot in IED. What is the difference between data and information? It may struggle to answer this because they think that it's the same. Numbers are data and you call numbers as information, no it is not. Data by itself differs a lot from information. Data is of little use unless it is transformed into something that can be comprehended as an info or an information. Information can be an answer, which you query or you raise a question and you use raw data to answer the question, then an information comes. We transform data into information through a software and here it is GIS or an information system. Let's take an example of population data. No one knows population data comes in a lot of tables once in every 10 years, census data. If you just look at it as numbers, it has no meaning, there's no information coming out. But when you query it, when you map it, then you have information coming out. For example, if a table is there of just a number of cities, population, male, female, you just look at the data, there's nothing that comes out. If you do analysis, etc., then you convert it into an information. If I ask a question to the data, what is the percentage of male and female? That is information. If it says 60% of population is male, 40% is female, that is information. It is based on the data, but data itself is not throwing any information, right? So it is always based on query and data by itself as a number doesn't make any change. Data also has a lot of timestamps. When was it taken? Is it relevant? What is the methodology that the data used, etc.? Let's continue the short description of GIS. Let's look at GIS process. Now we know what GIS is. It is used to convert spatial data into spatial information with geospatial locations. So in the GIS process, a normal process, you define a problem. As I said, you query, you define a problem, you ask a question, and from there, you take what kind of criteria you want, like define GIS criteria or the tools that you want to use or the complexity of GIS steps that you want to create. Then once you know the steps or visualize what you want to do using GIS, then you import the data for it. So import or build data sets. How do you import? You bring from remote sensing in this case. So in this case, in our lecture series, in the course content, the define the problem could be map the or identify the schools with proper road connection. Then the GIS criteria is to map. Map the location of the schools, map the roads, and then you know how many are connected. So this is the GIS criteria. Now I've told, I'm going to map the roads, map the schools. Now we have to import the data set. What data set? We need the road data set, we need the school data set. Then you do the GIS analysis, the multiple, multiple tools that help you to identify the distance between the road and the school and form clusters, how many schools, villages, clusters are attached to a particular road connection. Then you get your output. Are you done? In a normal scenario, yes. You stop the process. But the beauty of GIS is you can redefine the problem through discussions. So once you have the output, you have a decision taken, okay, you say, okay, X number of schools, like say 40% of schools have poor road network connectivity, 60% schools have good road network connectivity. Now the 40% you're going to discuss or take decisions on how to increase. But the beauty, as I said, is you can keep it moving along the same path in GIS. And this cyclic process helps you to refine the data. The output that you have here becomes your importing new data set. So you have new GIS analysis, and you can keep on fine tuning the data and the results up to the point where you are satisfied. And this process can go on as much as you have time, data power, etc. So with this short introduction, as I promised, let's look into how to download the QGIS. This lecture series is recorded in 2023. For 2023, the stable version, we're going to see what can be used in QGIS. If this course is rerun in some other year, because we have around 1,800 registrations already, which means the course may likely to be rerun in the following years. In that case, please go to the same website or the QGIS website and look at the stable version. Now I will take you to this website. So I'm going to click on this. It will open my web page. I love to share the window here. So when I click the link, you bring it here. If those in a different year, the link is not working because they have updated it. Just type QGIS and download. And then you will have download QGIS. So do not go into other software packages and download it because it is free. It has no payment. So don't go to other websites where you are asked to pay or maybe some kind of bugs may come. So the best is to use .qgis.org. And I've given the link. I've tested the link, so we're going to do it now. So suppose this link is working, a page like this will come. The first page where they say that how do you like the open-source software and especially QGIS, what are the projects going, crowdfunding, get involved, volunteering, etc. Again, this is an open-source software. So a lot of volunteers take part in building the software. Members who are using it, in my last week's lecture, I picked cases from these users and show that they are using this software even for launching rockets, sub-countries. So coming back, this is the download button that you need to click and this is the latest version that is available. Please note that the latest version need not be the most stable version. I will tell you what is the difference when we go to this page. So here you click download now and when you click download now, there will be multiple users, open-source software or different OS users. So this is for Windows. So normally Windows, Mac, OS, Apple, Linux, BSD, tablets, etc. Most people would have the Windows version. So let me click the Windows version. And you have the first green button which says download QGIS version 3.28. So this is the most richest, newest version. However, like any other software, the model gets updated regularly, which means there is a community which is updating the software by introducing new tools, better sophistication, models, GUI, the graphic user interface. So what we will have to do is we will have to use the most stable version. You can see here which is 3.22 long-term version. So do not use this, the download, the green big button which is 3.28 because for beginners I am saying if you are advanced user, yes, you can use it and then play and understand if it crashes. Stable version means it has been there for long term. It has been tested and the bugs are less. Like any software, every software will have bugs. So new software will have more bugs. So do not go for the newest one when you are beginner. Go for the most stable version. Once you click it, download page will come and ask where you want to download. I have already downloaded it here because it takes long time as I said. It took me 45 minutes and we cannot wait that long for class. So I have downloaded it, put it in your download folder and then there is a message which comes here about supporting QGIS if you want to. So now let me open the folder where I stored it and double click. When I double click the version. So you see that it comes up as the do you want to download. So and you will see yes, next, next. So it says you already have a version. So let me just remove the one I have. I have already removed it but sometimes there will be some traces of the software. It is a very quick software to install if you have downloaded the software. So while it is downloading, let me go back to the slide. Where I also wanted to show you the other users or knowledge products in QGIS web page that you can select. So now you could see that it is just setting up the space and then removing the traces of the software. So it will reinstall my software from the package I have. In the meantime, we will be discussing these other things from QGIS website. The link is given here. Let me click it. If we go to a new page, I will share it. Yes, in this you have discover QGIS. In the discover part, you have it claiming that it is the leading open source desktop GIS in the world. So it is very professional. It is used by many, many people and you have the applications and stuff. So this when you click get started, it goes to the download page, which you already have downloaded. The steps are you have download, check your documentation, connect with QGIS community. The community is where you discuss the problems, the statements between the users. So here is where getting help the community. I will come to that part later. But for now, let's go here. For the users, we can download the installer, we have already downloaded it, it is going on. I'll just check the status. Then what you do is you have the documentation where you have the user guide, training manual, tutorials, etc. So let's look at the user guide. In the user guide, we have what is new, how does it work, 3.22, etc., etc., right? Yes. So you can quickly download and look into this different, different materials, just like a book, but with chapters. So it's like a webpage book. You can see here that how do you work with project files? What does each tab mean? I will go through this in this week class, so don't worry about learning all these by yourself, but it's just a basic side gift. So if you need more in-depth, you can go here or there are links to a lot of tutorials, video tutorials. How do you handle broken path files? So I told you, there is a lot of path files that you can do, the interface, GUIs, the menu bar, what is the menu bar, what is the panel bar, all these things. So there are very, very important panels that you need to have, the browser, the processing toolbox, the major toolbox, and then these are your vector and cluster tools, the layers where you put the data, etc., etc., okay? So menu bars, toolbars, panels, map view and status bar. So this is your map view and the status, how and when it's running. So all these things you can learn as a book. This is a tutorial book that POPQ GIS, the beginners who you want and learn. Moving on, there are publications. So people use GIS and publish a lot of work. So you'll be able to see these publications in this space. Then you have support, commercial support. So even though GUIs is free, there are places where some companies and entities would require a higher level of association with QGIS. So there is a commercial support also wherein they have to pay. So but most, most time you can do what you want with the open source software alone. Now you go to our community and support channels. So in this part, what you could see is you have mailing list. You can ask a question on how it works. You can join, put your email into this and join the mailing list so that if there are new comments and suggestions, you will get to know about it. So this part is also there. And then you have different channels. So you have Telegram, like an app where you can exchange ideas, a lot of communities. It's English, mostly in English. So you can use it, Facebook, Matrix IRC, websites, et cetera, et cetera. So I don't have any preference, but one preference I do have is how to ask a question. You can just normally go there and type your question and within a day or two, someone like a volunteer would reply to the question. So for rural development, for example, what questions can you ask? One question would be, I don't find the data set or I don't know which tool to use for this specific application. Let's say groundwater mapping in rural villages. I don't know the tool, you can say, for which the community can give you some good examples. And those examples you could definitely use for your project. So these are how you could use it. And citations is needed. Like for example, if you have a good work or project, you can always cite them because it helps them to get more funds. Saying that, oh yes, I have used QGIS. It is a good software, all these things. Do you have to mention QGIS? There's no requirement because that is the principle of open source. But it is good. It is welcome if you could add a note saying that made with QGIS. So in my projects, in my reports, I will just add a line saying that QGIS was used. Why? Because people should not think that, oh, it's a very complex map. You need a proprietary software to make these maps. I want everyone to use it. Everyone can reproduce the results. So for which you create this kind of a software where everyone has access to it. It's very simple to use. And it doesn't take as much as memory and computing power as proprietary softwares. Normally, proprietary softwares will have a lot of buttons on the side, a lot of talking back and forth to the internet because they want to make sure your license is correct. So it always communicates back and forth. Whereas an open source does not care about licensing. So that is the part where you will have to understand that you are working with this software and it doesn't require major changes to your computer. So these two links I've already shared in the PowerPoint where you could go and learn by yourself and also discover QGIS, look into the communities, you can join the WhatsApp kind of group telegrams kind of like a WhatsApp. And also Stack Exchange. So the Stack Exchange is very useful. It is a place where you go and ask questions a lot. So let's quickly look at how people are asking questions. Some of these questions might be very advanced, but don't worry about it. Here is a place to learn. So QGIS is there. Some people can use proprietary and other softwares, but QGIS, you can click to see only QGIS questions. You, anybody can ask questions. Anybody can answer. So two things. One is you can be anyone, a student or owner of a company, you can ask questions and etc. Same, anyone can answer. So the credibility of the answer relies on your understanding and your use. So normally how people take a decision is like this. For example, zero answers are there. Let's say one answer and the user will click the green button to say that, yes, I like the answer and it is working well for mine. So let's look at National Geographic Base Map for QGIS. So what is the question? The question is, I need to use National Geographic Mapping for a project and I'm able to find any documentation. How do I get this into QGIS? How can I do this? So then they said there is a user who says there is a different version of National Geographic Maps. You can go here and put it and import it into QGIS. Therefore it has been answered. So sometimes if there's a good answer, people don't go again and again and answer it. But if there are answers which require some updation, some others can go and answer. So for example, you can put here and then answer. So you can see here how people take time and happiness in spreading the knowledge quickly. So it's a very good thing. It's called geographic information exchange, stack exchange. You don't have to sign up, but it's better to sign because they know who's putting questions and etc. There's no payment, it's a community to learn. So everyone can learn and stuff. So with this, I will continue the installation of the GIS software. I'll just quickly install it in the next version lecture. And then I will go back to the slides. And we will see quickly on the installation of 3.22, 0.14. We will upload it and we'll go through some of the bullets before we go into the vector data piece. With this, I'll stop today's lecture. Thank you.