 Hello, my name is Hans van der Kwasst. I'm a lecturer at IHE Delft Institute for Water Education. In this video I'm going to teach you what GIS is. The learning objectives of this lecture are to define GIS, to give examples of what can be done with GIS, and describe different tools that can be used for GIS, both open source and proprietary software. So what is GIS? GIS consists of three words, geographic, information, and system. It's geographic because it deals with spatially referenced data. The acquisition of data, the processing, the manipulation, and the analysis are done in geographic space, with coordinates. It's also an information system. It deals with software, hardware, database, where we can integrate, store, edit, analyze, share, and display spatial data. And it comes with applications. We need applications to create interactive queries, to analyze spatial information, edit data in maps, and present the results. So spatial data is in the center of a GIS. This is where the locations are, but only with locations we can't use it. We also need attribute data. The attributes connected to spatial data contain the information. And there's meta data. We need to know things like the units, the projection, and other data that we need to know before we can really use the data. Then there are all kinds of things that are around the spatial data. There's image raster processing. There's database management. There's geospatial analysis. There's geostatistical analysis, cartographic representation, and digitization. And they interact with the spatial data for the creation or as an output. So we can have data from sensors that provide raster images that we use in the GIS. We can have data from tables, spreadsheets, or comma-separated files that we can also use or convert to spatial data. We can do statistics, or derive statistical reports from the data, or we can digitize maps to get data into GIS, or we can get data out of the GIS and print it on a map or use it nowadays in visual products, such as interactive websites. The nice thing about the GIS is that there is spatial data that is connected to information, to attributes. So here if we click on a lake on the map, the name of the lake highlights in the attribute table, and it gives us the information about the lake. The other way around, if we click on the lake in the list in the attribute table, it will also highlight on the map. Here we see another example of what we can do with the GIS. This is a so-called isochrone map where we see the travel time from the center of Berlin to the outskirts, and the total travel time is 30 minutes. But we divide it in circles of five minutes intervals, and in this way we can see which areas can be reached very fast, or have a fast connection to the center and which take longer, of course depending on the road conditions. We can also represent data on interactive maps in so-called 2.5D. So 2D are flat maps, and 3D is when we need special equipment and 3D glasses, but if we have the shading impression, we call it 2.5D. And here we see the Vestrak catchment in Belgium. It's a Google satellite image draped over the SRTM digital elevation model, and on top of it we see in blue the hydrography from OpenStreetMap. So how did it all start? What was the history of GIS? Well, for GIS we need computers, so before the 1960s we consider it as the dark ages of GIS, where maps were made in a traditional way, on paper, and it was a craft. Nowadays, of course, it's also a craft, but we are very much depending on computer technology, and the technology started in 1960s up till 1975, and the first pioneer started doing things that we consider now GIS. One of them was Roger Tomlinson, and in that time it was already possible to print graphics using line printers and to store data using big mainframe computers, and also to record coordinates as a data input. And people like Roger Tomlinson were able to combine this technology into what we call the first GIS nowadays, and it was for the Canadian government, and he developed the Canadian geographic system, CGIS, and they invented to use the so-called layer approach, which we still use in GIS, where data is stored in different layers that can be superimposed. And they used this for the Canadian Lent Inventory in 1964, that took until 1971 to become fully operational, and at around the same time in the 70s it was the US Census Bureau who started also with GIS, and there's also an example from the Ordnance Survey in the UK who started to develop maps using GIS and different data products. A little further in time, between 1975 and 1990, was the time that computers became more and more available, so there was a possibility to commercialize GIS, and the first companies started developing software for GIS in the mid-70s, and there's also the time that SRE started, and in 1982 Arc Info was launched, and that developed until what we have nowadays with ArcGIS and ArcMap. Even later in time, between 1990 and 2010, many, many more people started using computers, and GIS becomes in academia and in governments a tool that is used next to your work processing or spreadsheet program, and more and more people are able to make maps, and this is because of course the computers become cheaper and faster and more powerful, and more software is available, and also the digital literacy is increasing, and what's also important is that around this time also a lot of new data becomes available, like data from satellite images. But how does this develop now? Well, today we are not depending on only commercial companies, we also have a lot more choice in software, and many tools are open source, which means that we can use them without buying a license, and that we are all able to contribute to these software products and to combine the different tools and to make new tools, products and services, and that's very important. So we can say that nowadays GIS is a multi-billion dollar industry where the tool is very useful for all kind of spatial planning and decision making and environmental assessments that we need to do with all the challenges that we face. So how do we use GIS in the water sector, for example? Well, it's an important tool in integrated water resources management. Traditionally, the different departments produce their own data, and it's very important that these different departments, different sectors reuse the data and analyze and combine data of each other to come to solutions that are needed for integrated water resources management. Also for disaster response, spatial data is very important. If there is a crisis or a problem, we need to immediately assess the problem and collect the proper data information, and then generate the alternatives and the solutions and have the policy action in place, and we also need to evaluate the outcome of our measure taken after the disaster. How is GIS used for urban water systems? Well, it's very important to map sewage systems and drainage systems and to plan the wastewater treatment plans, and it's also very important to take care of land use and land use change and relate the infrastructure to those changes. So here in this map we see a water supply network of Ajumani and Uganda, and these kind of maps are very important for utilities. We also use GIS in hydrological modeling. First of all, GIS can be used as a separate tool where we prepare the data for the model, and after modeling we post-process the data to get to our visualizations that we need. And we can visualize using a GIS and also in space and in time. But sometimes or often you also find integrated tools or plugins that take care of the whole modeling, pre- and post-processing and the visualization. So what is this pre-processing that we need to do? Well often we need to import or convert to the format that is used by the GIS, if we get data from sensors, from samples in the field, we need to read it in a certain way that the GIS can use it. Often the data is not in the right projection, so we need to define or change or reproject the data. Also the area that is used for analysis might be too large, and then we need to subset it, means clipping it to a smaller area, or we need to re-sample if it's a raster, which means that we go from one resolution to another resolution. And often data needs to be reconditioned and corrected. Then we can geoprocess the data, we can do all kinds of analysis using geoprocessing functionality, we can interpolate the data, very important if you have data for meteorological stations for example, and after all this we can export the data to the format that is used by the tools. So this is when the GIS is used for the pre-processing and the output of the pre-processing goes into another tool like a hydrological model. GIS can also be used for delineating the boundaries, so we can look at administrative boundaries such as the province, the country, or the R&D cement as you see here. We can also look at natural boundaries such as catchments or sub-catchments, and there are also more human-defined boundaries that are less clear, such as a delta or a national park. So GIS can be used for map production, very important output of GIS for visualizations, so not only on the map but also as we've seen in the 2.5D or 3D animations or interactive maps on websites. We can use it for geoprocessing, for using tools, many of the GIS software come with a so-called toolbox with lots of geoprocessing functions, and we can use those functions to do geospatial analysis in general. Nowadays, GIS doesn't run anymore on big mainframes, but we have a server these days which runs a GIS engine and it can be used to serve all kinds of maps and map products. We have a desktop where we can do our processing, although more and more is done online using the server and web services, and we even run our GIS on mobile devices, and they connect to a server for processing and for getting the data. So GIS is used in many platforms nowadays, but in this course we focus on the GIS desktop applications where we use an application with a graphical user interface or GUI. They consist of menus where we can make different choices such as loading the layers or doing vector or raster analysis or opening the processing toolbox. Then there are toolbars with a lot of icons that are shortcuts to the different tools. Then there's the layers panel where we can see all the map layers, and all these layers are in a certain order that determines the visualization in the map canvas. The map canvas is the place where the data of the layers of the map layers is visualized, and that builds our GIS system. Desktop applications normally have two views. There's the map canvas where we visualize the analysis results, and there's the print layout view where we can design our map for printing, for example, or for a digital document. There we see a piece of paper where we can add different elements of a map such as a north arrow, legend, scale bar, title, etc. Besides desktop applications we also have command line applications. That's very useful for testing and customizing GIS operations, and it is essential if you want to do batch processing or make spatial dynamic models, for example. There are nowadays a lot of tools. They're open source and proprietary tools, and they are different in the way they work. Open source software has community support, so there's not one company that you call to get support. There's no license cost. They are made to be interoperable, so you can always switch to another tool and combine results of different tools and integrate tools because it's based on open standards, and these standards determine how different software modules communicate with each other, and also with a server, for example, or with a sensor in the field. Because the code is open, it can be peer reviewed. That means that everybody who can read programming languages can check if the code of certain processing algorithms is really doing what the programmer intended to do. We also see with open source that new developments are quicker implemented, because the community develops the software, and if there's a need in the community it will be implemented. This doesn't mean that all these people work voluntarily. A lot of business is generated around the open source product, and there are a lot of companies investing in these tools, so if they want new features they can pay companies and develop the new feature, and of course then the new feature becomes available for the whole community. On the other hand there's the proprietary business model, where all the commercial support is with one vendor, where there is a license cost. There's a high risk of vendor login, which means that you have to always buy products of the vendor to have a smooth way of working, because they don't work a lot with standards and have their own standards. So this locks you into one company, and they use protected formats, so it's not easy to exchange the different formats. Their code cannot be peer reviewed, because it's closed, and there's a slow implementation of new features, and the features don't depend on the mass of users that want it, but on priorities of the company or the people who pay most. For GIS, open source software that is very popular is QGIS. There's also Saga, which is also included into QGIS in the processing toolbox. There's Ilvis and GDoll, with their many, many more tools. And from the proprietary tools there is of course the well known SRE ArcGIS. There's Idrisi from Clarke Labs, and there are also several other ones. Most of the open source software is under the umbrella of the OS Geo, Open Source Geospatial Foundation. Apart from dissemination of open source geo software, it's also involved in educational products and dissemination of open data. On their website you can see the different open source projects, and you can find news from the community and the foundation, and when their FOSS4G conferences are organized, so FOSS3 and open source software for geography, and every year there's a big international conference, but there are also local chapters. If you want to try open source geography GIS software, then for Windows you have the choice of OS Geo for W. It's an installer and you can choose a lot of different packages. And if you without installing want to try a lot of open source GIS software, you can also try the OS Geo Live, which can run as a virtual machine on your computer. So you don't have to really install all software, but you run the virtual machine that you can download for free from the internet and try QGIS or GeoNode or PostGIS and then decide if that's something you need. The most important open source GIS software, desktop software, is QGIS, and QGIS was invented by Gary Sherman in 2002, and at that time it was called Quantum GIS. In 2007 it became an incubator project of the OS Geo foundation, and after that a lot of developments happened. In 2009 the version 1.0 was released, and in 2013 version 2.0, and now we're in version 3.0, with the latest version is 3.6 at this moment of this recording, and there are also long-term releases introduced since version 2.8. These long-term releases are very important because they are sustained until the new LTR version comes available. So the current LTR is version 3.4. That means for over a longer term this version will be updated, will be maintained, and for operational use we can advise to use the LTR versions and not the newest versions, which are always good to try, but the LTR versions are more stable. So why are so many people using QGIS? First of all it's free as in lunch, which means you can install and use it and it doesn't cost you anything. There's no initial fee, no recurring fee, nothing, but it is also free as in liberty, which means that if you need something to be made for QGIS you can do something yourself instead of hoping and waiting for the next release, so you can sponsor the development, or if you're a developer you can edit yourself or program some plugins for example. That's also the reason why it's constantly developing because many people around the world are improving the software and it will not stop. It has a high critical mass and many people are developing new tools and there's a good relation between users and developers. There's extensive help and documentation available and most of the questions if you simply ask them in your search engine in your browser, there are many other people who had the same problem and many other people who helped people with problems to solve them, so there's a lot of information found on QGIS solutions on the internet. And what's also very important and contrary to proprietary software is that it supports different operating systems, so you can run it on the on the Mac or Windows or Linux or Unix. There's even an Android version. How do you install QGIS? Well you simply go to qgs.org and look for the download button and then choose your operating system and if you want to use it for operational use you choose then the long-term release LTR version. You need to know if your laptop or computer is 32 bits or 64 bits and if you're a new user then we can advise to use the standalone installer. The standalone Windows installer installs QGIS completely with grass, Python and all the libraries you need and it also and it also allows to do updates and therefore you use the OSGO for W installer that comes with it, so it's very easy to uninstall and reinstall the software and keep the settings even when you want to upgrade. The OSGO for W network installer always checks for the newest software through the internet and it comes with a nice wizard for Windows and you don't need to be concerned about the dependencies so it's easy to update the applications. When you use QGIS you also hear a lot about GDOL or GUDOL which is essentially a library to convert raster and vector formats. It takes into account not only the format change but also the changes in projection that you want and it stands for the geodata abstraction layer and supports many many formats. Here are a few like GeoTiff, Errosimagine, files or SV Shapefile or Google KML and the library is included in different programming languages so you can also use the library in Python for example to import different file types and to use these files in your scripts. It also comes with standalone utility programs and all the scripts and programs are also linked for example in QGIS so most of the functions in QGIS are based on GDOL functions. So it's widely used in both proprietary and open source software applications and we use the term GDOL mostly for raster and OGR for vector. In GIS we also use nowadays a lot the Python programming language that's a standard also for both commercial and open source software in GIS and that is because Python comes with a lot of geospatial analysis libraries that we can use to manipulate raster or vector data or do time series analysis and we can even make spatial dynamic models with Python. And scripting is a very important skill so after learning the basics of GIS you might want to go to more advanced skills such as scripting because that means you can do, you can run things in batch. For example if you need to convert 800 satellite image products from HDF format to GeoTIF and change at the same time the projection then it just requires a few lines of code and it will save you a lot of time and money to do that. And Python you can also find it integrated into the GIS desktop software such as ArcGIS and QGIS. So there are lots of tools and it's important to use a combination of tools because each tool has its advantages and disadvantages and the only way to learn it is practice so you need to learn it mostly on the job it doesn't help much to read books or manuals about GIS or lecture notes. Watching these videos can help you a bit to start but you're working on the task yourself that's the best way and internet is always there to ask your questions especially for the open source GIS if you need to know something just use the search engine in your browser.