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Swiss QGIS user group Meeting Berne 2022

Learn, Present, Discuss and MEET

In Summer 2022 the Swiss QGIS User community finally got together physically again to meet at the University of Berne, after 3 years of online meetings. Up to 90 QGIS users and contributors out of academia and engineering enjoyed and discussed the newest QGIS features and use cases.

After a warm welcome and introduction by Isabel Kiefer from OPENGIS.ch the presentations started.

QGIS Update

Marco Bernasocchi (OPENGIS.ch CEO and Qgis.org Chair) presented recent QGIS features out of the changelogs of current long term release 3.22, followed by versions 3.24 and 3.26. Among the enhancements are the new curve conversion vertex tool and improvements to the mesh editing, 3D-mode, WMS server and SQL logging, to name a few.

QGIS Animation Workbench

The real world is not static. Thus, often information can be understood more easily in animated form, like visualizing traffic on a map with moving vehicles. QGIS now supports dynamic renderings with the Animation Workbench Plugin. Tim Sutton (Kartoza) led through a Youtube Video showing the underlying mechanisms of the plugin and how to use it.

QGIS Model Baker Update

Starting with the new logo, Romedi Filli (GIS-Fachstelle, Kt. Schaffhausen) showed the latest improvements to the QGIS Model Baker plugin. Especially the data validator and UsabILIty Hub make QGIS project generation out of Interlis data even easier. Even more there is now a python package for those who prefer to python script it all together.

Using QGIS Model Baker for OEREB Cadastre

Adrian Weber (Dütschler + Partner) followed up presenting the use of QGIS Model Baker in migrating their management of municipal usage plans from proprietary software to QGIS driven workflow. Though they see the potential in this approach, they lack time and money, thus doing it step by step. In providing this public service the difficulty is that data is legally binding and system components need to meet this requirements.

Dynamic Forms and Widgets with QGIS Expressions

After a coffee break, Andreas Neumann (Amt für Geoinformation, Kt. Solothurn) gave an interesting technical speech on more dynamic QGIS forms and widgets. Form values can now be defined via expressions so they update automatically depending on other form values. Furthermore, action buttons can be included into forms and defined which can call external web-services, data dependent constraints be defined and more.

Analysis of Flight Trajectories

Driven by technical ambition and will to set some factual basis for political discussion, Yvo Weidmann (Geoidee) carried out a sophisticated analysis of descents to Zurich airport based on Open Source Flight Trajectories and swisstopo data. Therefore he processed data from opensky-network.org, the Aeronautical Information Publication after a lot of initial data validation and cleaning. He finally visualized the results in a nice QGIS driven animation of flight descents.

Teksi utilities application modules

Alexandre Bosshard (Ville de Pully) presented TEKSI, an association that has set itself the task of providing the operators of public infrastructure with decision-making support in the form of professional modules for controlling their activities, namely QGEP and QWAT for the moment with more to follow. Therefore they work on open-source software built mainly on top of QGIS and PostgresSQL/PostGIS.

QGEP (by Teksi) and hydraulic analysis with SWMM

Timothée Produit (Alpnetsystem SA (IG-Group)) gave a more technical speech on their approach of managing a central database to serve both, Teksi’s waste water management tool and QGIS extension QGEP and Stormwater Management Software SWMM to carry out hydraulic analysis in Swiss Romandie. He showed the necessary database and infrastructure setup and workflow steps to create the desired product.

The new Profile Tool in QGIS Core

Nyall Dawson (North Road) led through his Youtube video about QGIS project terrain settings and how they interact with 3d maps and the new elevation profile tool, which is only possible from version 3.26. Powerfull new possibilities to process and visualize elevation and 3D geodata worth watching. Nyall joined the conference virtually after the video to answer questions from the impressed audience.

Cool Maps made with QGIS

Finally Marco Bernasocchi closed the presentations with a collection of incredibly creative QGIS results including Xmas wishes, sports statistics and human facial topology

Workshops

After a tasty lunch including a delicious cheese selection and fruitful conversations the lucky subscribers where asked to take action themselves in the four afternoon workshops. Among other interesting topics the users could get hands on working with QField and QFieldCloud or could get started with QGIS Model Baker and data validation, all tought by the experts and developers of OPENGIS.ch.

First QField user day

A huge success

At the end of 2019, we organised the first QField user day in Bern. Around 40 participants from Switzerland and neighbouring countries joined the packed event with use case presentations by various power users of QField.

Fantastic use-case presentations

After a brief introduction by Matthias, Samuel Wechsler from the Swiss Ornithological Institute showed how they make their teams fly with QField to be more effective in protecting the Swiss bird fauna and its habitat. Next on the podium was one of the earliest QField pioneers, Daniel Gnerre from the city of Vevey telling the audience how the city thoroughly uses QField to collect and update data on just about anything and how they integrated QField in their geospatial infrastructure.

After a short break, Philipp Eigenmann showed us how he uses QField to manage the forest he and his team are responsible for. Finally, Samuel Oester and Till Weber from Oester Messtechnik presented Gasbusters – Chasing gas with QField explaining how they used QField in over 200 soil gas leaks campaigns measuring over 39’000 points to be then visualised on maps and with Grafana.

You can find all the slides and some videos of the presentations online.

Open discussion

A user day wouldn’t be a user day if there was no space for discussion. After the fantastic presentations, we launched an open discussion on the future of QField and how to sustainably maintain its growth rate and quality thanks to [financially] committed users. The discussion showed us a lot of willingness and commitment to help QField keep its incredible innovation level and its market leader position as reference GIS fieldwork app. This obviously gave us a lot of ideas and motivation and made us enjoy the closing beers even more 🙂

We would like to extend again a warm thank you to all the speakers and participants. We’re definitely looking forward to the next QField user day!

What’s next?

On 11.03.2020, just before the QGIS hackfest in Den Bosch (NL), we’ll lead a full-day workshop in the awesome GeoFort. Don’t worry, the workshop will be in English.

QField is growing steadily, plenty of new features (including native cloud synchronisation) are planned with the next releases of QField. We’d like to thank again all organisations, companies and individuals that actively use QField and that invest in making QField even better.

If you feel QField misses something you need or would like to support the project, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.

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