How to get ArcGIS and FOSS software
GTECH 709 How to get ArcGIS and FOSS softwareSoftware used in this courseGTECH 709 is highly unusual in a number of respects. One of these is the large number of different software packages that you will be introduced to. As you will see in the next PowerPoint (Opportunities of GIS), traditional desktop-based GIS is slowly giving way to GIS in the Cloud. We are probably still at the beginning of this transition, i.e., most GIS web services are still quite inferior to full-fledged desktop GIS. However, the GIS landscape has changed dramatically in the past few years and an Intro to GIS course that limits itself to just one software package is really not doing you justice anymore.This comes at a price though. Your learning curve has become steeper (in spite of GIS actually being easier to use these days) because you now have to learn half a dozen different software packages rather than just one.In general terms, we can distinguish between desktop-based and web services (Cloud) based systems. ArcGIS Desktop, Quantum GIS and SAGA GIS fall into the first category. ArcGIS Online, GeoCommons, and CartoDB into the second. But even this distinction is blurring. There are web servers that allow you to run QGIS remotely, ArcGIS Desktop and ArcGIS Online are becoming more and more integrated into each other, and while we are using CartoDB as a service, you can actually install and run it on your own machine like a desktop GIS (although this requires some technical setup skills that go beyond what you learn in GTECH 709).Another way to categorize the software we are working with is by the amount of money you would spend to do professional GIS work. All web GIS services will cost you eventually. Most of them have a free limited-functionality or limited-time teaser version, and that’s what we will be using. The moment you want to do some serious GIS work though, you are going to pay dearly. Somebody has to pay for running those servers and the providers are in not of the goodness of their heart but because they are after your money. As such, GIS web services are very much like commercial desktop GIS, except that they get updated whenever the need arises and you do not have to deal with any hardware or operating system issues because all you need is a browser.This is where free and open source software (or FOSS for short) like QGIS and SAGA GIS come to shine. They literally cost you nothing (other than the hardware of your choice to run them on) and you typically have a choice of what operating system you want to use (commercial GIS is almost always Windows-based). There are a lot more FOSS systems out there than just these two. Those of you who wish to experiment with them, are encouraged to download OSGeo-Live. This is a large archive that you can burn to DVD or onto a USB drive to boot your computer from or run in a virtual desktop. Without having to install a thing, it gives you access to a plethora of FOSS GIS applications.ArcGIS Online and GeoCommonsWe will start our first practical steps into GIS with ArcGIS Online. Or, since they have changed the rules on us over the summer and we still don’t know whether we can arrange for a truly free account that lasts at least a semester, a third party solution that uses ArcGIS Online called GeoCommons. In either case, you will have to create an account with the provider. Make sure that you do not sign up for anything that costs money!. Quantum GIS (QGIS)Quantum GIS (or QGIS for short) has grown to now be the widely used FOSS GIS. It is not necessarily better than other open source packages but it now has so much momentum that the development cycle is faster than for any other GIS software out there. As of fall 2014, the current version is 2.4 “Chugiak”. You can download older versions, but why would you want to do that? Well, there are actually a few good reasons. One is that we are not going to introduce you to functionalities that are not already in version, say 2.2. Another reason is backward compatibility. If you want to save your work to a QGIS project file and then continue working in the Hunter Geography labs, then you would be better off with version 2.0 because this is what they have installed there (don’t get me started!). Finally, writing documentation is more boring than developing new functionality. Which means that most tutorials have not yet been updated to version 2.4. By the way, this issue with versioning is not limited to QGIS – we are struggling with it for ArcGIS Desktop as well.Regardless of what you actually download and work with (and yes, you may install multiple version on the same computer, no harm done other than wasting some disk space and potentially confusing yourself), you are advised to bookmark the URL for the official documentation. In addition, there are plenty of tutorials out there, more than we can list here. Suffice it to say that the official documentation is always a good start.QGIS runs on many different platforms. The installer packages for Mac users require you to install two libraries first. If you want to run QGIS on a Mac, please follow the instructions on the PowerPoint slide and install first the geospatial data abstraction library GDAL 1.9 and then the GNU Scientific Library 1.16 before you run the installation of QGIS.QGIS also runs on a number of different flavors of Linux and even on the Android platform. If you run either of these, then you are likely to be technically advanced and won’t have problems finding the installation instructions for your particular ilk.CartoDBSimilar to ArcGIS Online, CartoDB is a GIS web service, in this case hosted by a local Brooklyn company called Vizzuality. Again, you will need to sign up for a free account. Right now, this free account has a nasty limitation to just five tables of somewhat limited size, and most annoyingly, only 250 geocoding credits. Colleagues in the Hunter Geography department are looking into setting up their own CartoDB server (the software is open source) but we have not resolved the user account management yet. So please stay tuned and in the meantime, do not hesitate to sign up for the free account on . The software itself is pretty amazing; a little bit like GeoCommons in its initial user friendliness but with the option to look under the hood and see how it all works.ArcGIS DesktopFor the past ten plus years, ESRI’s ArcGIS Desktop software has been the market leader and virtually every educational institution has been teaching this package. We will be talking about the history and features of ArcGIS at length in the week to come. Suffice it for now that this is a very big and complicated piece of software. It runs only on MS Windows computers and is quite resource hungry.One of the reasons for the software’s success is that its manufacturer ESRI has provided educational institutions with comparatively favorable licenses. Part of this deal is that every student enrolled in a bona fide GIS course can get access to a one-year license of a version of ArcGIS that has a very high degree of functionality and is worth thousands of dollars on the market. Students, of course, pick up this deal, learn to use ArcGIS and subsequently ask their employers to purchase the software. It is a win-win for students, educational institutions and ESRI. If you have a powerful computer (>8 GB of memory, >1TB hard disk) with Windows installed, then you should definitely ask your instructor for download and installation instructions as well as your personalized license code.If you have a Mac, then you need a really powerful one because you will first need to install Windows on top of iOS. The only other alternative is for students to either come to any Hunter lab (CUNY has a site license, so the software is installed in most if not all Hunter labs) or to install a virtual desktop on their computer and to run ArcGIS remotely through the virtual desktop interface. This does not require a powerful computer on your side but a stable and preferably fast Internet connection.As mentioned before, ArcGIS Desktop is a very big piece of software. It actually consists of many different programs, three of which you will be using extensively in GTECH 709. We start with ArcCatalog, a customization of MS Windows Explorer that recognizes GIS files and allows you to build your own GIS databases. Most ArcGIS spend most of their time with ArcMap, a program that as the name suggests allows you to create maps (visual representations of GIS data) but that also serves as the main tool to edit and analyze GIS data. ArcGIS consists of literally hundreds of little (and not so little) programs in form of so-called dynamic link libraries (DLLs). They are all organized in what is known as ArcToolbox, a repository of GIS routines that also serves as platform for the development of geoprocessing workflows.There is nobody, not even at ESRI, who knows how to competently use all the functionality built into this software. We can therefore scratch only the surface of this behemoth. We asked employers in the metro NY region and they all agreed that we would do our students a disservice if we do not teach ArcGIS. GTECH 709 will truly be an introduction to it.SAGA GISThe last software package that you may choose to work with as part of this course is SAGA GIS. It is not as comprehensive as say ArcGIS or QGIS but it occupies one niche very competently that none of the others cover very well: raster GIS. Similar to its equally powerful but less user-friendly cousin HYPERLINK "" GRASS (which is packaged alongside QGIS if you choose to install it), SAGA is very powerful when it comes to processing large data sets and really complicated workflows. If you continue into an advanced GIS course, then every little bit of experience with SAGA will serve you well.SAGA is not a required component of GTECH 709. If you prefer, you can instead do your lab exercises using the SpatialAnalyst extension to ArcGIS Desktop (which is part of the DVD image that you can download). If you work with natural resources, or if you have reason to work with remotely sensed data that you are probably better off learning SAGA. Otherwise, we recommend that you stick with ArcGIS – at least here in GTECH 709. It means one program less to learn or familiarize yourself with. ................
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