The 5th QGIS user group meeting in Scotland takes place next Wednesday at the University of Glasgow.  It is being hosted by the School of Geographical and Earth Sciences and has been generously sponsored by thinkWhere and Ordnance Survey.  You can find the draft programme of talks and presentations here: 5th-QGIS-user-group-programme

All tickets are now gone but get on the waitlist and you may be lucky.

See you all there!

Last year, I published the short post QGIS on the rise with journalists showcasing how QGIS is used by journalists with examples from the Los Angeles Times and Financial Times.

The latest QGIS case study now features an interview with Steven Bernard (Interactive Design Editor at the Financial Times) by A. Neumann and T. Sutton.

QGIS is now an integral part of our mapping workflow. (…) I would say 80% of our maps are now produced in QGIS. read more …

It’s great to see all the great examples of QGIS used to communicate international news. Thanks to everyone involved in this interview for sharing this case study with the community!

I’m sure you are all well aware of my hate of blocking dialogs, and when it comes to styling QGIS has a few and they annoy me to no end. With new fancy map making tools like MapBox and CartoDB all having nice non blocking styling options it’s about time QGIS followed suit to bring better control and faster workflows to users.

The first stage of the dock is complete, pending feedback of course, and merged into master.

Introducing the map styling dock:

Having the style (label only at the moment) options in a dock widget opens up some really nice workflows to map styling.

Firstly, now you don’t have to do the Open -> Change Setting -> Apply -> Close -> Open dance each time you want to change a layer style.  The dock is linked to the active layer in the legend so you can move around freely, update settings, and move on.

Second, we can now have a great workflow and allow for live updating. Yes you did read that right, it will live update the map as you change values. How bloody great is that!  Reducing the feedback loop is always the best.  If it can be done live, do it live.  There is a Reset button if you make a mistake.

Third, all styling options will now live in a single location going forward. Once we have moved style, diagrams, blend modes, it will be a one stop shop for styles with no annoying dialogs getting in the way.

In QGIS 2.14 we also have this awesome feature for rule based labels, however that added another dialog, and I wasn’t going move to a dock just to have another dialog block me two steps down the road. So now all the rules based labels dialogs are panels inside the main dock. When adding a new rule it will show the rule editor, and the list when not.  Remember how I said the dock updates the map live, well that also applies when you add/update rules.  The dock will update the canvas as the rule changes even before you hit save on the rule

The new styling dock is in master now, although might not be in the nightly build for a day or so.

You can check out some videos of the dock in action here:

Super keen on any feedback and ideas anyone might have.  Give it a try and let me know what you think.

EDIT: I would also like to add that what I have started/done is only possible because of the great work that has been done before me. Big thanks to all the people that have done work to enable me to make this feature,  label settings, threaded rendering, data defined buttons, etc.

In time for QGIS 2.14 (soon to be LTR), I have updated “Learning QGIS” to reflect the latest improvements of our favorite GIS.

To celebrate, we are giving away 100 copies of the book at 30% (for print) and 50% (for eBook) discount if you use the following codes:

30% off  the Print version
Code: prt30LeaQS

50% off the eBook version
Code: LeaQSebok50

(Codes are valid until 30th April 2016 or we’ve reached 100 copies.)

Crayfish 2.2 is out with lots of new features and new formats.

Plotting time series and cross sections

Profile tool plugin deemed not to be suitable for plotting time series. It lacks several features for visualising plots over s specific grid and generally to user interface is not very intuitive.

With the new plot options, user can plot time series at a point from the map or using an existing layer to generate plots. The tool is very flexible and allows user to export the layer to another format. In addition to time series, you can also generate cross section plots. Video below demonstrates the new feature in action:

As you can see, in the above video, more points can be added to the plot. To do so, you need to hold down CTRL key.

GRIB and NetCDF support

We have decided to expand the user base for Crayfish and allow meteorologists and oceanographers to view their temporal unstructured GRIB or NetCDF directly in Crayfish. Examples of those datasets can be found here and here

Support for TELEMAC and HEC RAS 2D

We also added suppord for HEC RAS 2D and TELEMAC. Our initial benchmark shows that Crayfish is much faster than an other TELEMAC plugins we used. Plus, Crayfish is truly open source!

More vector, contour and mesh options

You can now filter vectors to display only values above/below a certain threshold.

Contour label and values in Crayfish are now similar to raster styling in QGIS. This will allow users to generate better legend directly from Crayfish for print or animation outputs.

For debugging, we have added option to allow users to label mesh and change symbology.

Sponsor

We’d like to thank The Laboratory of Hydraulics, Hydrology and Glaciology (VAW) of ETH Zurich for sponsoring plotting feature.

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There is a FOSS4G UK conference, unconference, workshop, hackathon, code sprint and party happening in Southampton in June this year.  If you are free from the 14th to 16th then this is a fantastic opportunity to come and find out more about free and open-source software for Geo.  Have a look at the OSGeo site (http://uk.osgeo.org/foss4guk2016/) for more information.  If you want to submit a talk and/or workshop then you can do so through the site.  Early bird tickets will be going on sale tomorrow (13 April) and will be available through the site from Eventbrite.

Following up on last week’s post, Nyall has continued his work on the QGIS gradient editor:

Latest version of the new QGIS interactive gradient edit. This now includes an interactive plot of the color hue/saturation/lightness/alpha, allowing a visual overview of these color components and easy editing.

Another equally awesome demo has been posted by Nathan, who is currently working on usability improvements for labeling and styling without blocking dialogs:

This is going to be great for map design work because it makes many complex styles much easier to create since you can interact with the map and attribute table at the same time.

These are definitely two developments to follow closely!

Interesting developments going on if you like creating your own gradients. After all, that’s not as easy as it might initially seem, as Gregor Aisch describes in his post “Mastering Multi-hued Color Scales with Chroma.js”:

If you turn data into colors, this should be required reading: vis4.net/blog/posts/mas… via @driven_by_data #dataviz https://t.co/RADLExzYxM

—
Joshua Stevens (@jscarto) April 01, 2016

The issues with simple color interpolations, which include nonuniform changes in lightness between classes, also haunt us in cartography. Just have a look at the map and legend on the left-hand side, which has been created using a normal custom QGIS gradient with colors ranging from black to red, yellow and finally white. We end up with three classes in yellow which are nearly impossible to tell apart:

For comparison, on the right side, I’ve used Gregor’s corrected color ramp, which ensures that lightness changes evenly from one class to the next.

Wouldn’t it be great if the built-in gradient tool in QGIS could correct for lightness? Too bad the current dialog is not that great:

image from https://docs.qgis.org/2.8/en/docs/user_manual/working_with_vector/style_library.html

My first reaction therefore was to write a short script to import gradients from Gregor’s Chroma.js Color Scale Helper into QGIS:

@jscarto script is ready, just needs a pretty GUI now #QGIS https://t.co/vblWVeCiBm

—
Anita Graser (@underdarkGIS) April 02, 2016

But we’ll probably have a much better solution in QGIS soon since Nyall Dawson has picked up the idea and is already working on a completely new version of the gradient tool. You can see a demo of the current work in progress here:

I’m really looking forward to trying this out once it hits master!

This is a short tip for you if you use QGIS on Windows and ended up with an error like this:

Windows’ suggestion to reinstall probably won’t fix this issue. Instead, you want Windows to run qgis.bat instead of any .exe it is trying to use. Right-click a .qgs file and go to Open with | Choose default program:

In OSGeo4W, the .bat file is located in the bin folder:

Happy QGISing!

In der Schweiz werden amtliche Geodatenmodelle vorwiegend mit Interlis erstellt und häufig wird das Interlis-Transferformat für den offiziellen Datenaustausch vorgegeben. Das Interlis-Plugin für QGIS ermöglicht die einfache Verarbeitung von Interlis-Daten und bindet externe Java-Applikationen in die Processing-Toolbox ein. Interlis ist primär ein Austauschformat und müss für die Verarbeitung in einem GIS konvertiert werden. Die Unterstützung von Interlis in der Open Source Bibliothek GDAL/OGR wurde ursprünglich von den Kantonen Thurgau und Solothurn finanziert und später vom KOGIS und der QGIS Usergruppe Schweiz finanziell gefördert. Der Interlis-Treiber war die treibende Kraft zur Unterstützung von mehreren Geometrien in einem Layer und zur Aufnahme von Kreisbögen in das Geometriemodell in Version 2.0 von GDAL/OGR.

Das Interlis-Plugin für QGIS nutzt die Funktionen von GDAL/OGR zur einfachen Verarbeitung von Interlis-Daten. Mit der Version 0.9 im März 2016 wurde die Einrschränkung auf eine Geometrie pro Layer für OGR-Datenquellen behoben, sowie die Ansicht von Interlis-Daten markant vereinfacht. Erreicht wird das durch die Auslagerung von Funktionen als Processing-Algorithmen, welche auf Java-Bibliotheken beruhen. Zur vereinfachten Installation und Konfigurationen werden die benötigten JAR-Dateien mit dem Plugin mitgeliefert.

Mit der im März veröffenlichten Version 2.14 von QGIS wurde in der OSGeo4W-Distribution der Umstieg auf OGR 2.0 vollzogen. Damit kann das im QGIS-Repository verfügbare Interlis-Plugin ohne weiteres verwendet werden. Noch einfacher geht es mit der “QGIS Portable Swiss Edition”, die ohne Installation direkt verwendet werden kann und damit keine Administratoren-Rechte benötigt. Das Interlis-Plugin ist darin bereits enthalten und QGIS ist für den Einsatz in der Schweiz mit den entsprechenden Referenzsystemen vorkonfigiert. Auch die NTv2-basierte Umrechnung von LV03 und LV95 ist bereits enthalten. Das ZIP-File kann hier heruntergeladen werden und an beliebiger Stelle (auch auf einem USB-Stick) entpackt werden. Mit dem Aufruf von “qgis.bat” wird das vorkonfigurierte QGIS gestartet ist sofort einsatzbereit.

Transferdaten im Interlis 1 (itf) oder im Interlis 2 (xtf) Format können über den Plugin-Dialog direkt in einen Layer importiert werden. Das dient in erster Linie der einfachen Visualisierung von Interlis-Daten, über die Speicherfunktionen der QGIS-Layer kann die temporäre Ansicht jedoch auch in eines der untestützen OGR-Formate wie Shapefiles konvertiert werden.

Das Interlis-Modell wird über einen Webdienst in den offiziellen Repositories gesucht und im IlisMeta XML-Format zurückgeliefert. Dieses Modell-Format kann von OGR direkt gelesen werden. Falls das Modell nicht gefunden wird, kann es mit dem Processing-Tool “Ili Model -> IlisMeta” erzeugt werden.

Zur Ausführung wird ein Java-Interpreter benötigt. Falls dieser nicht automatisch gefunden wird, muss der Pfad unter Verarbeitung->Optionen entpsprechend konfiguriert werden.

Ein solches IlisMeta-Modell kann im Import-Dialog unter “Lokales Modell” ausgewählt werden. Damit können z.B. kantonale AV-Daten importiert werden:

Für Anwender, welche die Grundlagen zur Verarbeitung von Interlis an einem Workshop erlernen wollen, veranstaltet Sourcepole am 13.4.16 einen eintägigen Kurs in Zürich. Darin werden zuerst Interlis-Grundlagen und die Abbildungsmöglichkeiten auf releationale Datenbanken vermittelt. Ausgehend von QGIS wird auch auf weitere Open Source Tools wie ili2pg und ili2gpkg eingegangen. Anmeldung und weitere Informationen: sourcepole.ch/kurse/

Today’s post was motivated by a question on GIS.StackExchange, which is looking for an automated way to symbolize the amenities available at a location using a series of icons, like this:

Assuming the information is available in  a format similar to this example attribute table

we can create a symbol, which adapts to the values in the icon columns using data-defined overrides:

The five potential symbol locations are aligned next to each other using offsets. We use the following expression to determine the correct SVG symbol:

CASE
WHEN "icon4" = 'dinner'
 THEN 'C:/OSGeo4W64/apps/qgis-dev/svg/entertainment/amenity=restaurant.svg'
WHEN "icon4" = 'sleep'
 THEN 'C:/OSGeo4W64/apps/qgis-dev/svg/accommodation/accommodation_hotel2.svg'
WHEN "icon4" = 'ship'
 THEN 'C:/OSGeo4W64/apps/qgis-dev/svg/transport/amenity=ferry_terminal.svg'
WHEN "icon4" = 'house'
 THEN 'C:/OSGeo4W64/apps/qgis-dev/svg/accommodation/accommodation_house.svg'
 ELSE  ''
END

To hide icons if the icon value is NULL, the marker size is set to 0 using, for example:

CASE
WHEN "icon4" is not NULL
 THEN 4
 ELSE 0
END

Finally, to ensure that the labels don’t cover the icons, we can use the cartographic label placement with the position priority set to ‘TR,TL,BL’, which restricts labels to the top right, top left, and bottom left position.

With these settings in place, we can zoom out and the labeling algorithm picks the most suitable position from the list of allowed positions:

For more cartography tips and tricks check my new book QGIS Map Design or join my QGIS training courses.

Today’s post was motivated by a recent question on the #gistribe Twitter chat:

Is there a way in #qgis to have polygon outline colors changed the way the fill can be when you categorize data? #gistribe

—
Michele M Tobias (@MicheleTobias) March 11, 2016

So what’s the issue?

Default polygon symbols come with a fill and a border color:

When they are used in a graduated renderer, the fill color is altered for each class:

What if you want to change the border color instead?

The simplest solution is to add an outline symbol layer to your polygon symbol:

The outline layer has only one color property and it will be altered by the graduated renderer.

If you now hit ok, the graduated renderer will alter both the simple fill’s fill color and the outline’s color. To stop the fill color from changing, select the simple fill and lock it using the small lock icon below the list of symbol layers:

Voilà:

For more cartography tips and tricks check my new book QGIS Map Design or join my QGIS training courses.

Sorry, this entry is only available in the Dutch language

Today I’m releasing the first version of QGIS Server Simple Browser Plugin, a simple Server plugin that generates a browsable table of contents of the project’s layers and a link to an OpenLayers map.  

How it works

The openlayers format

Limitations

Source code and download

Have you ever thought “gee I wish I could have a ASCII  QGIS map viewer for console use.  I’m so over these fancy UIs with their fancy graphics, fonts, and icons”.

No?

Anybody?

You are still reading? OK good I thought I lost you.

Anyway. Here is a fun idea. A ASCII QGIS map viewer that renders your project files in a console window (with colour possible).  Still with me?

This project was mainly just a bit of fun to play with the curses Python library and QGIS. What started off as a random idea on the train seems to have turned into full “usable” thing, if viewing a project and the legend is considered usable.

If you are still with me and itching to see it in action here it is.  In all the ASCII glory

Nifty!

What can it do so far?

• Load project
• Pan
• Zoom
• Set colour mode on/off

The code is up at https://github.com/NathanW2/ascii_qgis (or http://nathanw2.github.io/ascii_qgis/)

It’s a bit of a fun side project at the moment so you might find bugs as I have only tested it on my machine.

Follow the README on github for notes on running.

Have fun.

Last week not only QGIS 2.14.0 Essen was released but also a great book “QGIS Map Design” based on this new version of QGIS. A release of QGIS is special but this release concerns an announced LTR release.  QGIS 2.8.7 is the current LTR version in which al bugs found between 2.8 and 2.14.0 have been … Continue reading New release of QGIS and book!

Recently, I have come across the news about extent of damage and human loss, in case of the Mosul dam breach in Iraq.

Having all the tools, some freely available data and a free weekend, I have decided to carry out my own analysis.

Data

For the Digital Elevation Model (DEM), I used the data from JAXA Earth Observation Center (EORC).

The resolution of the DEM is approximately 30 metres. For more detailed analysis, a better dataset (e.g. LIDAR) would be ideal.

Methodology

I set up a 2-dimensional model with the following assumptions and parameters:

• A square cell size (70 metres)
• The dam was assumed to be full
• Simulation time of 24 hours
• The breach would occur after the first hour (1:00 hour in to the model run)
• The dam would be completely breached after 1 hour (between 1:00 - 2:00 hour during the model run)

Results

Using Crayfish plugin for QGIS, the results can be animated to see the on-set of the flooding.

Note, that the first hour of the model run was used to initialise the water level within the dam. Hence, for the actual flood travel time, one hour should be deducted from the timing shown towards the bottom right corner of the video.

Below, you can see the flood extent generated based on my calculations and the extent shown here (red line in the main map) for Mosul.

Maximum flood extent due to the breach of the upstream dam in Mosul. (Click to enlarge)

Disclaimer: The calculation carried out for this demo was very approximate. Despite obtaining very similar results for Mosul compared to the original study, further checks and revisions are required.

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Tracing button

If you are using QGIS for digitizing work, you have probably seen the 2.14 Changelog entry for Trace Digitizing. The main reason why this is a really cool new feature is that it speeds up digitizing a lot. When tracing is enabled, the digitizing tools take care to follow existing features (as configured in the snapping options). For a detailed howto and videos check Lutra’s blog.

Fantastic new autotrace digitizing function for #qgis 2.14 which we helped fund :-) https://t.co/5SnAqbapEA

—
James Rutter (@Chobhamonian) March 01, 2016

We’ve recently been developing a client plugin for forest management which relies on the Python SQLAlchemy module. When I installed the latest version of my colleague’s work I got a Python traceback error about a missing Python module (SQLAlchemy).

This blog is more of a note to myself for future reference of how to install third-party modules in QGIS’ Python environment.

The Problem

Installing third-party modules in Windows is usually quite straight-forward, either download an installer (which will find the Python environment from the registry) or use easy_install from the Python setuptools.

The problem is that QGIS ships with its own Python installation that these methods cannot easily add to.

(Don’t get me wrong - I like the fact that each QGIS instance has its own Python environment as it keeps each version very self-contained).

The Method

So here’s the method I successfully used to install SQLAlchemy (which I’ll use here to install the lxml module):

• Click Start
• Type QGIS

• Wait for the QGIS version / instance you want to modify to appear:

  

• Right-click it, select Run as administrator
• In QGIS, select Python Console from the Plugins menu
• Download ez_setup.py from here.
• Run the following code on the python console in QGIS:

from subprocess import call
# Replace the path below to the location of ez_setup.py that
# you just downloaded
call(['python', r'C:\Users\Pete\Downloads\ez_setup.py'])

# This will install *setuptools* which is a package manager
# The previous command should return 0 on success

# Replace lxml with the package you wish to install
call(['easy_install', 'lxml'])

# Again this will return 0 on success

• Restart QGIS (normally, not using the Run as administrator option)

The new module should now be available, we can test this (again on the Python console in QGIS):

import lxml

That’s it!

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QGIS is a user friendly Open Source Geographic Information System that runs on Linux, Unix, Mac OSX, and Windows.

We are very pleased to announce the release of QGIS 2.14 ‘Essen’.  Essen was the host city to our developer meet ups in October 2012 and 2014.

Long Term Release

This is a special release since it is designated an ‘LTR’ (Long Term Release). LTR releases will be supported with backported bug fixes for one year, and will be in permanent feature freeze (i.e. no new features will be added, only bug fixes and trivial updates). Note that we are in discussion to extend the term of our LTR releases to two years, but for technical reasons we will not do this until QGIS 3.2.

The purpose of LTR releases is to provide a stable and less frequently changing platform for enterprises and organizations that do not want to deal with updating user skills, training materials etc. more than once per year. The success of the LTR is very much down to you, our beloved users – we need your support to help funding bug fixes and making sure in your support contracts with support providers specify that any bug fixes done on your behalf are applied to the LTR branch as well as our normal development branch.

If an LTR is important to you, please consider also directly supporting the QGIS project, or encourage your commercial provider to use LTR as a basis for your enterprise solution so that everyone may benefit from a stable platform that is being continuously improved and refined. Note that for users and organizations that like to live on the frontier, our regular four monthly releases will continue unabated.

New Features in QGIS 2.14 ‘Essen’

If you are upgrading from QGIS 2.8 (our previous LTR version) you will find a
great many new features in this release. (http://qgis.org/en/site/forusers/visualchangelog214/)

We encourage you to peruse the changelogs for the intermediate non LTR 2.10 and 2.12 releases as this QGIS 2.14 includes all features published in those releases too.
(http://qgis.org/en/site/forusers/visualchangelog212/)
(http://qgis.org/en/site/forusers/visualchangelog210/)

Note that 2.14 first enters the regular package repositories and will not immediately replace 2.8 in the LTR package repositories. That will happen when 2.16 is released.

Whenever new features are added to software they introduce the possibility of new bugs – if you encounter any problems with this release, please file a ticket on the QGIS Bug Tracker. (http://hub.qgis.org)

The source code and binaries for Windows, Debian and Ubuntu are already available via the large download link on our home page: http://qgis.org.  More packages will follow as soon as the package maintainers finish their work. Please revisit the page if your platform is not available yet.

Thanks

We would like to thank the developers, documenters, testers and all the many folks out there who volunteer their time and effort (or fund people to do so). From the QGIS community we hope you enjoy this release! If you wish to donate time, money or otherwise get involved in making QGIS more awesome, please wander along to qgis.org and lend a hand!

QGIS is supported by donors and sponsors. A current list of donors who have
made financial contributions large and small to the project can be seen on our
donors list.  If you would like to become and official project sponsor, please
visit our sponsorship page for details.
(http://qgis.org/en/site/about/sponsorship.html)

Current Sponsors of QGIS:

Sponsoring QGIS helps us to fund our six monthly developer meetings, maintain project infrastructure and fund bug fixing efforts. A complete list of current sponsors is provided below – our very great thank you to all of our sponsors!

SILVER AGH University of Science and Technology, Krakow, Poland
SILVER Sourcepole AG, Switzerland
SILVER GAIA mbH, Germany
SILVER Office of Public Works, Flood Risk Management and Data Management
       Section, Ireland
SILVER Land Vorarlberg, Austria
BRONZE 2D3D.GIS, France
BRONZE Cawdor Forestry, United Kingdom
BRONZE ChameleonJohn, United States
BRONZE Chartwell Consultants Ltd., Canada
BRONZE Gis3W, Italy
BRONZE Dr. Kerth + Lampe Geo-Infometric GmbH, Germany
BRONZE Gaia3D, Inc., South Korea
BRONZE GeoSynergy, Australia
BRONZE GFI – Gesellschaft für Informationstechnologie mbH, Germany
BRONZE GKG Kassel, (Dr.-Ing. Claas Leiner), Germany
BRONZE HostingFacts.com, Estonia
BRONZE Lutra Consulting, United Kingdom
BRONZE MappingGIS, Spain
BRONZE Nicholas Pearson Associates, United Kingdom
BRONZE QGIS Polska, Poland
BRONZE Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, United Kingdom
BRONZE TerreLogiche, Italy
BRONZE Trage Wegen vzw, Belgium
BRONZE Urbsol, Australia
BRONZE GIS-Support, Poland
ADLARES GmbH, Germany
BRONZE WhereGroup GmbH & Co. KG, Germany
BRONZE www.molitec.it, Italy
BRONZE www.argusoft.de, Germany
BRONXE Customer Analytics, USA
BRONZE Nicholas Pearson Associates
QGIS is Free software and you are under no obligation to pay anything to use it – in fact we want to encourage people far and wide to use it regardless of what your financial or social status is – we believe empowering people with spatial decision making tools will result in a better society for all of humanity. If you are able to support QGIS, you can donate using this link : http://qgis.org/en/site/getinvolved/donations.html

Happy QGISing!

Regards,

The QGIS Team!