QGIS and FOSS GIS Wishlist for 2016

Happy holidays! I am certainly thankful for QGIS this year as it showed significant improvements to its capabilities and the user experience.  Many other free and open source GIS projects also improved including a major update of GRASS GIS and gvSIG graduating from incubation. In addition, SaTScan continues to get easier to use while providing advanced spatio-temporal statistics. GeoDA has reached nearly 150,000 downloads, and LAStools continues to rock!

Thanks to QGIS and  ALL FOSS GIS Developers!

I wanted to take a moment to talk about my QGIS wishlist for 2016.  In the coming year, I hope to get more involved...I am aiming for trying to create some plugins. You can checkout the QGIS roadmap and submit requests for new features at: http://hub.qgis.org/projects/quantum-gis/roadmap.

What are your wishes for QGIS in 2016?  Feel free to leave them in comment section below!

Of course, the core QGIS developers are always hard at work, and some of these may not be scheduled for the near or future release, but it is always good to dream! These are on the advanced feature end, and although not critical, would be nice to have.

My QGIS wishlist for 2016:

• Continued commitment to cartography (definitely happening)
• Full-funding goals reached for crowdsourced QGIS plugins and projects.
• More maps in the QGIS Flickr Showcase (Do your part!)
• Continued improvements to the Print Composer
• Error-free or near-error free releases of QGIS. 
• I worry as more features are added, more bugs could creep in!
• Ability to join points to lines - visualizing data by street segments can be extremely cool!
• More spatial analysis tools integrated directly into QGIS core
• Might include linear directional mean, standard distance, or others...
• Ability to create an address locator from reference data
• Online locators have limitations (number of records that can be (batch) geocoded) and can't be used for confidential data

Some other/non-QGIS wishes

• Open routing and isochrone maps for the US (See also: http://openrouteservice.org/)
• Some new and exciting projects!  Revival of old favorites?

How to contribute
Lastly, there are many ways to contribute to QGIS: http://qgis.org/en/site/getinvolved/index.html. Also, if you use QGIS, whether for school, business, government, or non-profit, please consider a donation!  https://www.qgis.org/en/site/getinvolved/donations.html

QGIS 2.12 Release: Focus on Customization

QGIS 2.12 Lyon has been released and focuses on customization based on user preferences and improvements for more efficient workflows.  For a quick overview of changes head over to the Visual Change Log:http://www.qgis.org/en/site/forusers/visualchangelog212/index.html

Project Management
After installing 2.12 and creating or re-saving at least one project, restart QGIS and you will be greeted by a "Recent Projects" window within QGIS that has a thumbnail of your project, title, and a few details, like coordinate system and projection.  Double-click on an entry and you will be taken to your project.

Recent Projects display nicely and neatly within QGIS.

User Interface
You can now change the color scheme of QGIS to suit your liking, daytime, or nighttime mapping lifestyle.  I am sure that the QGIS Community will come up with some neat themes--and at least one in QGIS green!  Note: As of writing, there has been a bug that will be quickly fixed.  How to make changes are described by the feature's creator here: http://nathanw.net/2015/08/29/ui-theme-support-now-core-in-qgis/.  The default UI can be rather bright being both gray and white.  Having some contrast can definitely help users in certain settings.

You can now change the UI theme to suit your liking.
Image source: http://nathanw.net/2015/08/29/ui-theme-support-now-core-in-qgis/

Conditional Formatting in the Attribute Table
Cells in attribute tables can now be color coded based on rules.  This can help to identify certain groups of data as well help to highlight errors or outliers. It is easy to overlook the new button for this feature. After opening the attribute table, look in the upper right-hand corner for a small button with color bars stacked. Click the image below to get a closer look at its placement.

In the table above, records for Alabama ("STATE"='AL') are highlighted in Red,
while Arizona's records below are not highlighted.

The color formats are saved, so when you re-open your QGIS project and the attribute table they will still be there.  It is a good way to keep notes or tag certain records for later.

Labels
There are numerous improvements to labeling including:

• Only drawing labels that fit inside polygons
• Label priority and obstacles
• Rule-based labeling

Print composer
QGIS Atlas in Print Composer is getting closer and closer to ArcGIS's Data Driven Pages that is used to create map books.  Navigation is now easier as buttons allow users to skip ahead to any page in the map book. More data defined controls have been added -- allowing for the creation of more complex map books that loop over different layers.  If you want to learn more about the Atlas feature in QGIS, check out my YouTube video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCISvTfHtZc

Symbology
Existing color ramps can now be edited, so you do not have to start from scratch.  This is a definite time-saver and an overdue feature.

All color ramps, including existing ones, can now be edited.

Other Notable New Features
There are improvements to digitizing in QGIS as well as raster alignment tools, and much more!

Book Review: An Introduction to R for Spatial Analysis and Mapping

I decided to talk a walk on the wild-side and examined R as a GIS for spatial analysis.  I hope to use several of R's spatial statistics packages and to automate tasks--staying within one program.  I highly recommend Brunsdon and Comber's book ($50 on Amazon, Paperback, electronic versions also available).

About the Authors: Chris Brunsdon is the creator of geographically weighted regression or GWR. Lex Comber is a professor at Leeds University.

Four Reasons to choose R as a GIS
1)  You are interested in performing tailored exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA), spatial statistics, regression analysis, and diagnostics.

• Of course, R is also way better than ArcGIS and QGIS for summary statistics too. (Notably, QGIS has integrated a R processing toolbox into it. ArcGIS  also has an official bridge to R.)

2)  You already use R for non-spatial data, have lots of code written, and need to analyze spatial data.

3)  You do not want to export your data (or results) from one program into another and back again!

4) You want to be able to publish or share your code with a wider audience.

A great cover to a great book!

Reader Accessibility
The content is extremely well-presented, clear and concise, and includes color graphics. It is not overly technical. Still, R as a GIS and spatial analysis are tough material and is definitely not for the faint-of-heart. The authors assume readers may not have either a R or GIS background, or both. I took a R class in graduate school and occasionally use it.

Additional packages that assist in manipulating and reshaping data, such as plyr, are also discussed. The authors also warn readers that R packages can change over time, causing error messages, but many warn users about recent and upcoming changes.

Overview
In the first 40 pages, you will learn R basics, if you don't already have a foundation. Next, you will learn GIS fundamentals, how to plot data to create a map, taking into account scale, and adding and positioning common map elements like a north arrow and scale bar. This may sound basic but in R nothing is easy!  Of course, the advantage with code is that you can reuse it or may only need to modify it slightly for many maps.

Late in Chapter 5-6 the book dives into spatial analysis.  The last few chapters are probably the best of the book, as more advanced statistical techniques are discussed including local indicators of spatial auto correlation (LISAs), geographically weighted summary statistics and regression.

The book providers a great guide and reference, and I am sure I will be re-visiting it frequently!  Overall, it is a great mix of practice and theory.

Disclosures: 
None, I found and purchased the book on my own.

Video: QGIS Print Composer - Side-by-Side Maps and Atlas

QGIS has a powerful print composer that allows users to create complex maps very quickly.  Two common practical examples include creating: 1) side-by-side (or multiple maps) on the same canvas/layout and 2) a map book or atlas. This week's video looks at these cases: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCISvTfHtZc.

In the video, we will create side-by-side maps of different band combinations of remote sensing imagery of the Salton Sea.  For a related blog post, visit:
http://opensourcegisblog.blogspot.com/2015/08/tutorial-side-by-side-maps-in-qgis.html

We will also use the atlas to take a closer look a battleground states during the 2012 presidential election.

Lastly, I searched high and low, but I could not find any guidance or cartographic reference on creating side-by-side maps. So, I looked through several dozen examples, found a couple of themes, and drafted some suggestions --which you can find towards the introduction--and below.

A few suggestions for creating multiple maps on the same canvas/layout.

In the coming months, we will also re-visit the atlas function in print composer and look at more complex examples.

Video: Tips for Using QGIS Print Composer

QGIS Print Composer can be a little awkward to use at first.  It is analogous to Layout View in ArcGIS.  We will look at some tips to make it easier to use and understand how to create maps in QGIS.

In the video, we will review a map of 2012 Presidential Election Results, as seen below.

In Part II, I will show you how to create side-by-side map series, which is great to look at changes over time as well as different band combinations in remote sensing.  We will also take a look at creating an atlas or map book, essentially iterating/repeating the map making process by a geographic area.  Lastly, we will take a look at the QGIS Map Showcase on Flickr.

If there is something you would like to see, let me know in the comments section below.

Update #1: Print composer has an add Legend button but in this video I used an image file because I used some fancy rule-based symbology, the legend was not easy to look at. Normally, I would just select add Legend.

Video: Free and Open Source GIS Reference Data

After last week's post looking at the landscape of free and open source GIS software, the next logical step is looking at open GIS data. This video looks at reference data. I am still deciding on what to do the next video on...the choices are a) Open data portals, b) novel data types, social media (TwitteR and Instagram), or c) remote sensing.  Let me know what you would like to see in the comments below.

Topics covered in the video include:
Census: https://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/tiger.html
DataFerrett: http://dataferrett.census.gov/
Summary File 1 DVD: https://www.census.gov/mp/www/cat/decennial_census_2010/summary_file_1_1.html
Natural Earth: http://www.naturalearthdata.com/
OpenStreetMap: https://www.openstreetmap.org/
GeoNames: http://www.geonames.org/
US Board on Geographic Names:http://geonames.usgs.gov/domestic/index.html
Maryland Department of Planning/ACS: http://www.mdp.state.md.us/msdc/S7_ACS.shtml

Video: A Quick Introduction to Free and Open Source GIS

My first video has been posted to YouTube.  It briefly covers the landscape of free and open source GIS (FOSS GIS), remote sensing and processing, a few related tools, and JavaScript libraries for creating online interactive webmaps.  It does not cover every program out there but gives new and returning users a place to see all of the options available.  You can check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB_qnTE-W9c or subscribe to the channel by clicking here.

I hope to bring out more videos in the near future including delving into each of the programs and step-by-step tutorials.  So stay tuned!  As always feel free to leave comments, questions, or feedback below.  Be sure to like the video and subscribe if you would like to see more.