In a recent post, we used aggregates for labeling purposes. This time, we will use them to create a dynamic data driven style, that is, a style that automatically adjusts to the minimum and maximum values of any numeric field … and that field will be specified in a variable!

But let’s look at this step by step. (This example uses climate.shp from the QGIS sample dataset.)

Here is a basic expression for data defined symbol color using a color ramp:

Similarly, we can configure a data defined symbol size to create a style like this:

Temperatures in July

To stretch the color ramp from the attribute field’s minimum to maximum value, we can use aggregate functions:

That’s nice but if we want to be able to quickly switch to a different attribute field, we now have two expressions (one for color and one for size) to change. This can get repetitive and can be the source of errors if we miss an expression and don’t update it correctly …

To avoid these issues, we use a layer variable to store the name of the field that we want to use. Layer variables can be configured in layer properties:

Then we adjust our expression to use the layer variable. Here is where it gets a bit tricky. We cannot simply replace the field name “T_F_JUL” with our new layer variable @style_field, since this creates an invalid expression. Instead, we have to use the attribute function:

With this expression in place, we can now change the layer variable to T_M_JAN and the style automatically adjusts accordingly:

Temperatures in January

Note how the style also labels the point with the highest temperature? That’s because the style also defines an expression for the show labels option.

It is worth noting that, in most cases, temperature maps should not be styled using a color ramp that adjusts to a specific dataset’s min and max values. Instead, we would want a style with fixed value to color mapping that makes different datasets comparable. In many other use cases, however, it is very convenient to have a style that can automatically adapt to the data.

In the previous post, I demonstrated the aggregation support in QGIS expressions. Another popular request is to aggregate or cluster point features that are close to each other. If you have been following the QGIS project on mailing list or social media, you probably remember the successful cluster renderer crowd-funding campaign by North Road.

The point cluster renderer is implemented and can be tested in the current developer version. The renderer is highly customizable, for example, by styling the cluster symbol and adjusting the distance between points that should be in the same cluster:

Beyond this basic use case, the point cluster renderer can also be combined with categorized visualizations and clusters symbols can be colored in the corresponding category color and scaled by cluster size, as demoed in this video by the developer Nyall Dawson:

In the past, aggregating field values was reserved to databases, virtual layers, or dedicated plugins, but since QGIS 2.16, there is a way to compute aggregates directly in QGIS expressions. This means that we can compute sums, means, counts, minimum and maximum values and more!

Here’s a quick tutorial to get you started:

Load the airports from the QGIS sample dataset. We’ll use the elevation values in the ELEV field for the following examples:

QGIS sample airport dataset – categorized by USE attribute

The most straightforward expressions are those that only have one parameter: the name of the field that should be aggregated, for example:

mean(ELEV)

We can also add a second parameter: a group-by field, for example, to group by the airport usage type, we use:

mean(ELEV,USE)

To top it all off, we can add a third parameter: a filter expression, for example, to show only military airports, we use:

mean(ELEV,USE,USE='Military')

Last but not least, all this aggregating goodness also works across layers! For example, here is the Alaska layer labeled with the airport layer feature count:

aggregate('airports','count',"ID")

If you are using relations, you can even go one step further and calculate aggregates on feature relations.

There are tons of things going on under the hood of QGIS for the move from version 2 to version 3. Besides other things, we’ll have access to new versions of Qt and Python. If you are using a HiDPI screen, you should see some notable improvements in the user interface of QGIS 3.

But of course QGIS 3 is not “just” a move to updated dependencies. Like in any other release, there are many new features that we are looking forward to. This list is only a start, including tools that already landed in the developer version 2.99:

Improved geometry editing 

When editing geometries, the node tool now behaves more like editing tools in webmaps: instead of double-clicking to add a new node, the tool automatically suggests a new node when the cursor hovers over a line segment.

In addition, improvements include an undo and redo panel for quick access to previous versions.

Improved Processing dialogs

Like many other parts of the QGIS user interface, Processing dialogs now prominently display the function help.

In addition, GDAL/OGR tools also show the underlying GDAL/OGR command which can be copy-pasted to use it somewhere else.

New symbols and predefined symbol groups

The default symbols have been reworked and categorized into different symbol groups. Of course, everything can be customized in the Symbol Library.

Search in layer and project properties

Both the layer properties and the project properties dialog now feature a search field in the top left corner. This nifty little addition makes it much easier to find specific settings fast.

Save images at custom sizes

Last but not least, a long awaited feature: It’s finally possible to specify the exact size and properties of images created using Project | Save as image.

Of course, we still expect many other features to arrive in 3.0. For example, one of the successful QGIS grant applications was for adding 3D support to QGIS. Additionally, there is an ongoing campaign to fund better layout and reporting functionality in QGIS print composer. Please support it if you can!

From 28th April to 1st May the QGIS project organized another successful developer meeting at the Linuxhotel in Essen, Germany. Here is a quick summary of the key topics I’ve been working on during these days.

New logo rollout

It’s time to get the QGIS 3 logo out there! We’ve started changing our social media profile pictures and Website headers to the new design: 

Resource sharing platform 

In QGIS 3, the resource sharing platform will be available by default – just like the plugin manager is today in QGIS 2. We are constantly looking for people to share their mapping resources with the community. During this developer meeting Paolo Cavallini and I added two more SVG collections:

Road sign SVGs by Bertrand Bouteilles & Roulex_45 (CC BY-SA 3.0)

SVGs by Yury Ryabov & Pavel Sergeev (CC-BY 3.0)

Unified Add Layer button

We also discussed the unified add layer dialog and are optimistic that it will make its way into 3.0. The required effort for a first version is currently being estimated by the developers at Boundless.

TimeManager

The new TimeManager version 2.4 fixes a couple of issues related to window resizing and display on HiDPI screens. Additionally, it now saves all label settings in the project file. This is the change log:

- Fixed #222: hide label if TimeManager is turned off
- Fixed #156: copy parent style to interpolation layer
- Fixed #109: save label settings in project
- Fixed window resizing issues in label options gui
- Fixed window resizing issues in video export gui
- Fixed HiDPI issues with arch gui

After my previous posts on flow maps, many people asked me how to create the curved arrows that you see in these maps.

Arrow symbol layers were introduced in QGIS 2.16.

The following quick screencast shows how it is done. Note how additional nodes are added to make the curved arrows:

In 2012 I published a post on mapping the then newly released Tirol river dataset.

In the comments, reader Michal Zimmermann asked:

Do you think it would be possible to create a river stream which gains width along its way? I mean rivers are usually much narrower on their beginnings, then their width increases and the estuary should be the widest part, right?

For a long time, this kind of river style, also known as “tapered lines” could only be created in vector graphics software, such as Inkscape and Illustrator.

With the help of geometry generators, we can now achieve this look directly in QGIS:

Data cc-by Land Tirol

In the river dataset published by the state of Tirol, all rivers are digitized in upstream direction. For this styling to work, it is necessary that the line direction is consistent throughout the whole dataset.

We use a geometry generator symbol layer to split the river geometry into its individual segments:

Then we can use the information about the total number of segments (accessible via the expression variable @geometry_part_count) and the individual segment’s number (@geometry_part_num) to calculate the segment’s line width.

The stroke width expression furthermore uses the river category (GEW_GRKL) to vary the line width depending on the category:

CASE 
WHEN "GEW_GRKL" = '< 10 km2 Fluss' THEN 0.2
WHEN "GEW_GRKL" = '10 km2 Fluss' THEN 0.4
WHEN "GEW_GRKL" = '100 km2 Fluss' THEN 0.6
WHEN "GEW_GRKL" = '1.000 km2 Fluss' THEN 0.8
ELSE 1.0
END 
* ( 1- ( @geometry_part_num /  @geometry_part_count ))

If the rivers are digitized in downstream direction, you can simply remove the 1- term.

Happy mapping!

Geometry generator symbol layers are a feature that has been added in QGIS 2.14. They allow using the expression engine to modify geometries or even create new geometries while rendering.

Geometry generator symbol layers make it possible to use expression syntax to generate a geometry on the fly during the rendering process. The resulting geometry does not have to match with the original geometry type and we can add several differently modified symbol layers on top of each other.

The latest version of the QGIS user manual provides some example expressions, which served as a basis for the following examples:

Rendering the centroid of a feature

To add a geometry layer representing feature centroids, we need to set the geometry type to Point / Multipoint and enter the following expression:

centroid( $geometry )

It is worth noting that the correct geometry type has to be set manually. If a wrong type is set, the symbol layer can not be rendered.

Drawing buffers around features

Buffers are an example of a polygon geometry generator layer. The second parameter of the buffer function defines if the buffer is generated outside (for positive values) or inside (for negative values) of the feature. The value has to be provided in the layer’s CRS units, in this case, that means an inner buffer of 0.005 degrees:

buffer( $geometry, -0.005 )

Creating a line between features in different layers

The following expression creates lines from all district centroids (as shown in the first example) and a feature from the Citybike layer where the STATION attribute value is ‘Millennium Tower’:

make_line( 
  centroid( $geometry ),
  geometry( get_feature( 'Citybike', 'STATION', 'Millennium Tower' ) ) 
)

More advanced examples

Using these basic examples as a starting point, geometry generators open a wide field of advanced symbology options. For example, this sector light style presented on GIS.Stackexchange or my recently introduced conveyor belt flow style:

Today’s post was motivated by a question following up on my recent post “Details of good flow maps“: How to create arrows with gradients from transparent to opaque?

The key idea is to use a gradient fill to color the arrows:

It all seems perfectly straightforward: determine the direction of the line and set the gradient rotation according to the line direction.

But wait! That doesn’t work!

The issue is that all default angle functions available in expressions return clockwise angles but the gradient rotation has to be set in counter-clockwise angles. So we need this expression:

360-angle_at_vertex($geometry,1)

Happy QGISing!

In my previous posts, I discussed classic flow maps that use arrows of different width to encode flows between regions. This post presents an alternative take on visualizing flows, without any arrows. This style is inspired by Go with the Flow by Robert Radburn and Visualisation of origins, destinations and flows with OD maps by J. Wood et al.

The starting point of this visualization is a classic OD matrix.

For my previous flow maps, I already converted this data into a more GIS-friendly format: a Geopackage with lines and information about the origin, destination and strength of the flow:

In addition, I grabbed state polygons from Natural Earth Data.

At this point, we have 72 flow features and 9 state polygon features. An ordinary join in the layer properties won’t do the trick. We’d still be stuck with only 9 polygons.

Virtual layers to the rescue!

The QGIS virtual layers feature (Layer menu | Add Layer | Add/Edit Virtual Layer) provides database capabilities without us having to actually set up a database … *win!*

Using a classic SQL query, we can join state polygons and migration flows into a new virtual layer:

The resulting virtual layer contains 72 polygon features. There are 8 copies of each state.

Now that the data is ready, we can start designing the visualization in the Print Composer.

This is probably the most manual step in this whole process: We need 9 map items, one for each mini map in the small multiples visualization. Create one and configure it to your liking, then copy and paste to create 8 more copies.

I’ve decided to arrange the map items in a way that resembles the actual geographic location of the state that is represented by the respective map, from the state of Vorarlberg (a proud QGIS sponsor by the way) in the south-west to Lower Austria in the north-east.

To configure which map item will represent the flows from which origin state, we set the map item ID to the corresponding state ID. As you can see, the map items are numbered from 1 to 9:

Once all map items are set up, we can use the map item IDs to filter the features in each map. This can be implemented using a rule based renderer:

The first rule will ensure that the each map only shows flows originating from a specific state and the second rule will select the state itself.

We configure the symbol of the first rule to visualize the flow strength. The color represents the number number of people moving to the respective district. I’ve decided to use a smooth gradient instead of predefined classes for the polygon fill colors. The following expression maps the feature’s weight value to a shade on the Viridis color ramp:

ramp_color( 'Viridis',
  scale_linear("weight",0,2000,0,1)
)

You can use any color ramp you like. If you want to use the Viridis color ramp, save the following code into an .xml file and import it using the Style Manager. (This color ramp has been provided by Richard Styron on rocksandwater.net.)

<!DOCTYPE qgis_style>
<qgis_style version="0">
  <symbols/>
    <colorramp type="gradient" name="Viridis">
      <prop k="color1" v="68,1,84,255"/>
      <prop k="color2" v="253,231,36,255"/>
      <prop k="stops" v="0.04;71,15,98,255:0.08;72,29,111,255:0.12;71,42,121,255:0.16;69,54,129,255:0.20;65,66,134,255:0.23;60,77,138,255:0.27;55,88,140,255:0.31;50,98,141,255:0.35;46,108,142,255:0.39;42,118,142,255:0.43;38,127,142,255:0.47;35,137,141,255:0.51;31,146,140,255:0.55;30,155,137,255:0.59;32,165,133,255:0.62;40,174,127,255:0.66;53,183,120,255:0.70;69,191,111,255:0.74;89,199,100,255:0.78;112,206,86,255:0.82;136,213,71,255:0.86;162,218,55,255:0.90;189,222,38,255:0.94;215,226,25,255:0.98;241,229,28,255"/>
    </colorramp>
  </colorramps>
</qgis_style>

If we go back to the Print Composer and update the map item previews, we see it all come together:

Finally, we set title, legend, explanatory texts, and background color:

I think it is amazing that we are able to design a visualization like this without having to create any intermediate files or having to write custom code. Whenever a value is edited in the original migration dataset, the change is immediately reflected in the small multiples.

Last time, I wrote about the little details that make a good flow map. The data in that post was made up and simpler than your typical flow map. That’s why I wanted to redo it with real-world data. In this post, I’m using domestic migration data of Austria.

Raw migration data, line width scaled to flow strength

With 9 states, that makes 72 potential flow arrows. Since that’s too much to map, I’ve decided in a first step to only show flows with more than 1,000 people.

Following the recommendations mentioned in the previous post, I first designed a basic flow map where each flow direction is rendered as a black arrow:

Basic flow map

Even with this very limited number of flows, the map gets pretty crowded, particularly around the north-eastern node, the Austrian capital Vienna.

To reduce the number of incoming and outgoing lines at each node, I therefore decided to change to colored one-sided arrows that share a common geometry:

Colored one-sided arrows

The arrow color is determined automatically based on the arrow direction using the following expression:

CASE WHEN
 "weight" < 1000 THEN color_rgba( 0,0,0,0)
WHEN
 x(start_point( $geometry)) - x(end_point($geometry)) < 0
THEN
 '#1f78b4'
ELSE
 '#ff7f00'
END

The same approach is used to control the side of the one-sided arrow head. The arrow symbol layer has two “arrow type” options for rendering the arrow head: on the inside of the curve or on the outside. This means that, if we wouldn’t use a data-defined approach, the arrow head would be on the same side – independent of the line geometry direction.

CASE WHEN
 x(start_point( $geometry)) - x(end_point($geometry)) < 0
THEN
 1
ELSE
 2
END

Obviously, this ignores the corner case of start and end points at the same x coordinate but, if necessary, this case can be added easily.

Of course the results are far from perfect and this approach still requires manual tweaking of the arrow geometries. Nonetheless, I think it’s very interesting to see how far we can push the limits of data-driven styling for flow maps.

Give it a try! You’ll find the symbol and accompanying sample data on the QGIS resource sharing plugin platform:

In my previous post, I shared a flow map style that was inspired by a hand drawn map. Today’s post is inspired by a recent academic paper recommended to me by Radoslaw Panczak @RPanczak and Thomas Gratier @ThomasG77:

Jenny, B., Stephen, D. M., Muehlenhaus, I., Marston, B. E., Sharma, R., Zhang, E., & Jenny, H. (2016). Design principles for origin-destination flow maps. Cartography and Geographic Information Science, 1-15.

Jenny et al. (2016)  performed a study on how to best design flow maps. The resulting design principles are:

• number of flow overlaps should be minimized;
• sharp bends and excessively asymmetric flows should be avoided;
• acute intersection angles should be avoided;
• flows must not pass under unconnected nodes;
• flows should be radially arranged around nodes;
• quantity is best represented by scaled flow width;
• flow direction is best indicated with arrowheads;
• arrowheads should be scaled with flow width, but arrowheads for thin flows should be enlarged; and
• overlaps between arrowheads and flows should be avoided.

Many of these points concern the arrangement of flow lines but I want to talk about those design principles that can be implemented in a QGIS line style. I’ve summarized the three core ideas:

1. use arrow heads and scale arrow width according to flow,
2. enlarge arrow heads for thin flows, and
3. use nodes to arrange flows and avoid overlaps of arrow heads and flows

To get started, we can use a standard QGIS arrow symbol layer. To represent the flow value (“weight”) according to the first design principle, all arrow parameters are data-defined:

scale_linear("weight",0,10,0.1,3)

To enlarge the arrow heads for thin flow lines, as required by the second design principle, we can add a fixed value to the data-defined head length and thickness:

scale_linear("weight",0,10,0.1,1.5)+1.5

The main issue with this flow map is that it gets messy as soon as multiple arrows end at the same location. The arrow heads are plotted on top of each other and at some point it is almost impossible to see which arrow starts where. This is where the third design principle comes into play!

To fix the overlap issue, we can add big round nodes at the flow start and end points. These node buffers are both used to render circles on the map, as well as to shorten the arrows by cutting off a short section at the beginning and end of the lines:

difference(
  difference(
    $geometry,
    buffer( start_point($geometry), 10000 )
  ),
  buffer( end_point( $geometry), 10000 )
)

Note that the buffer values in this expression only produce appropriate results for line datasets which use a CRS in meters and will have to be adjusted for other units.

It’s great to have some tried and evaluated design guidelines for our flow maps. As always: Know your cartography rules before you start breaking them!

PS: To draw a curved arrow, the line needs to have one intermediate point between start and end – so three points in total. Depending on the intermediate point’s position, the line is more or less curved.

The QGIS map style I want to share with you today was inspired by a hand-drawn map by Philippe Rekacewicz that I saw on Twitter:

The look reminds me of conveyor belts, thus the name choice.

You can download the symbol and a small sample dataset by adding my repo to the QGIS Resource Sharing plugin.

The conveyor belt is a line symbol that makes extensive use of Geometry generators. One generator for the circle at the flow line start and end point, respectively, another generator for the belt, and a final one for the small arrows around the colored circles. The color and size of the circle are data defined:

The collection also contains a sample Geopackage dataset which you can use to test the symbol immediately. It is worth noting that the circle size has to be specified in layer CRS units.

It’s great fun playing with the power of Geometry generator symbol layers and QGIS geometry expressions. For example, this is the expression for the final geometry that is used to draw the small arrows around colored circles:

line_merge( 
  intersection(
    exterior_ring( 
      convex_hull( 
        union( 
          buffer( start_point($geometry), "start_size" ),
          buffer( end_point($geometry), 500000 )
        )
      )
    ),
    exterior_ring( 
      buffer( start_point( $geometry), "start_size" )
    )
  )
)

The expression constructs buffer circles, the belt geometry (convex_hull around buffers), and finally extracts the intersecting part from the start circle and the belt geometry.

Hope you enjoy it!

It’s holiday season, why not share one of your own symbols with the QGIS community?

In the previous post, I presented an approach to generalize big trajectory datasets by extracting flows between cells of a data-driven irregular grid. This generalization provides a much better overview of the flow and directionality than a simple plot of the original raw trajectory data can. The paper introducing this method also contains more advanced visualizations that show cell statistics, such as the overall count of trajectories or the generalization quality. Another bit of information that is often of interest when exploring movement data, is the time of the movement. For example, at LBS2016 last week, M. Jahnke presented an application that allows users to explore the number of taxi pickups and dropoffs at certain locations:

Jahnke, M., Ding, L., Karja, K., & Wang, S. (2017). Identifying Origin/Destination Hotspots in Floating Car Data for Visual Analysis of Traveling Behavior. In Progress in Location-Based Services 2016 (pp. 253-269). Springer International Publishing.

By adopting this approach for the generalized flow maps, we can, for example, explore which parts of the research area are busy at which time of the day. Here I have divided the day into four quarters: night from 0 to 6 (light blue), morning from 6 to 12 (orange), afternoon from 12 to 18 (red), and evening from 18 to 24 (dark blue).

Aggregated trajectories with time-of-day markers at flow network nodes (data credits: GeoLife project, map tiles: Carto, map data: OSM)

The resulting visualization shows that overall, there is less movement during the night hours from midnight to 6 in the morning (light blue quarter). Sounds reasonable!

One implementation detail worth considering is which timestamp should be used for counting the number of movements. Should it be the time of the first trajectory point entering a cell, or the time when the trajectory leaves the cell, or some average value? In the current implementation, I have opted for the entry time. This means that if the tracked person spends a long time within a cell (e.g. at the work location) the trip home only adds to the evening trip count of the neighboring cell along the trajectory.

Since the time information stored in a PostGIS LinestringM feature’s m-value does not contain any time zone information, we also have to pay attention to handle any necessary offsets. For example, the GeoLife documentation states that all timestamps are provided in GMT while Beijing is in the GMT+8 time zone. This offset has to be accounted for in the analysis script, otherwise the counts per time of day will be all over the place.

Using the same approach, we could also investigate other variations, e.g. over different days of the week, seasonal variations, or the development over multiple years.

In the fist two parts of the Movement Data in GIS series, I discussed modeling trajectories as LinestringM features in PostGIS to overcome some common issues of movement data in GIS and presented a way to efficiently render speed changes along a trajectory in QGIS without having to split the trajectory into shorter segments.

While visualizing individual trajectories is important, the real challenge is trying to visualize massive trajectory datasets in a way that enables further analysis. The out-of-the-box functionality of GIS is painfully limited. Except for some transparency and heatmap approaches, there is not much that can be done to help interpret “hairballs” of trajectories. Luckily researchers in visual analytics have already put considerable effort into finding solutions for this visualization challenge. The approach I want to talk about today is by Andrienko, N., & Andrienko, G. (2011). Spatial generalization and aggregation of massive movement data. IEEE Transactions on visualization and computer graphics, 17(2), 205-219. and consists of the following main steps:

1. Extracting characteristic points from the trajectories
2. Grouping the extracted points by spatial proximity
3. Computing group centroids and corresponding Voronoi cells
4. Deviding trajectories into segments according to the Voronoi cells
5. Counting transitions from one cell to another

The authors do a great job at describing the concepts and algorithms, which made it relatively straightforward to implement them in QGIS Processing. So far, I’ve implemented the basic logic but the paper contains further suggestions for improvements. This was also my first pyQGIS project that makes use of the measurement value support in the new geometry engine. The time information stored in the m-values is used to detect stop points, which – together with start, end, and turning points – make up the characteristic points of a trajectory.

The following animation illustrates the current state of the implementation: First the “hairball” of trajectories is rendered. Then we extract the characteristic points and group them by proximity. The big black dots are the resulting group centroids. From there, I skipped the Voronoi cells and directly counted transitions from “nearest to centroid A” to “nearest to centroid B”.

From thousands of individual trajectories to a generalized representation of overall movement patterns (data credits: GeoLife project, map tiles: Stamen, map data: OSM)

The resulting visualization makes it possible to analyze flow strength as well as directionality. I have deliberately excluded all connections with a count below 10 transitions to reduce visual clutter. The cell size / distance between point groups – and therefore the level-of-detail – is one of the input parameters. In my example, I used a target cell size of approximately 2km. This setting results in connections which follow the major roads outside the city center very well. In the city center, where the road grid is tighter, trajectories on different roads mix and the connections are less clear.

Since trajectories in this dataset are not limited to car trips, it is expected to find additional movement that is not restricted to the road network. This is particularly noticeable in the dense area in the west where many slow trajectories – most likely from walking trips – are located. The paper also covers how to ensure that connections are limited to neighboring cells by densifying the trajectories before computing step 4.

Running the scripts for over 18,000 trajectories requires patience. It would be worth evaluating if the first three steps can be run with only a subsample of the data without impacting the results in a negative way.

One thing I’m not satisfied with yet is the way to specify the target cell size. While it’s possible to measure ellipsoidal distances in meters using QgsDistanceArea (irrespective of the trajectory layer’s CRS), the initial regular grid used in step 2 in order to group the extracted points has to be specified in the trajectory layer’s CRS units – quite likely degrees. Instead, it may be best to transform everything into an equidistant projection before running any calculations.

It’s good to see that PyQGIS enables us to use the information encoded in PostGIS LinestringM features to perform spatio-temporal analysis. However, working with m or z values involves a lot of v2 geometry classes which work slightly differently than their v1 counterparts. It certainly takes some getting used to. This situation might get cleaned up as part of the QGIS 3 API refactoring effort. If you can, please support work on QGIS 3. Now is the time to shape the PyQGIS API for the following years!

The possibility to easily share plugins with other users and discover plugins written by other community members has been a powerful feature of QGIS for many years.

The QGIS Resources Sharing plugin is meant to enable the same sharing for map design resources. It allows you to share collections of resources, including but not limited to SVGs, symbols, styles, color ramps, and processing scripts.

Using the Resource Sharing plugin is like using the Plugin Manager. Once installed, you are presented with a list of available resource collections for download. You will find that there are already some really nice collections, including nautical symbols, Mapbox Maki Icons, and my Google-like OSM road style.

By pressing Install, the resource collection is downloaded and you can have a look at the content using the Open folder button. In case of the Mapbox Maki Icon collection, it contains a folder of SVGs:

Using the new icons is as simple as opening the layer styling settings and selecting the Mapbox Maki Icons collection in the SVG group list:

Similarly, if you download the OSM Spatialite Googlemaps collection, its road line symbols are added to your existing list of available line symbols:

By pressing the Open Library button, you get to the Style Manager where you can browse through all installed symbols and delete, rename, or categorize them.

The Resource Sharing plugin was developed by Akbar Gumbira during this year’s Google Summer of Code. The full documentation, including instructions for how to share your own symbols with the community, is available at www.akbargumbira.com/qgis_resources_sharing.

This is a guest post by Mickael HOARAU @Oneil974

For people who are working on QGIS Atlas feature, I worked on an Atlas version of the last tutorial I have made. The difficulty level is a little bit more consequente then last tutorial but there are features that you could appreciate. So I’m happy to share with you and I hope this would be helpful.

You can download tutorial here:

Material Design – QGIS Atlas Tutorial

And sources here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B37RnaYSMWAZUUJ2NUxhZC1TNmM/view?usp=sharing

PS : I’m looking for job offers, feel free to contact me on twitter @Oneil974

In the first part of the Movement Data in GIS series, I discussed some of the common issues of modeling movement data in GIS, followed by a recommendation to model trajectories as LinestringM features in PostGIS to simplify analyses and improve query performance.

Of course, we don’t only want to analyse movement data within the database. We also want to visualize it to gain a better understanding of the data or communicate analysis results. For example, take one trajectory:

(data credits: GeoLife project)

Visualizing movement direction is easy: just slap an arrow head on the end of the line and done. What about movement speed? Sure! Mean speed, max speed, which should it  be?

Speed along the trajectory, a value for each segment between consecutive positions.

With the usual GIS data model, we are back to square one. A line usually has one color and width. Of course we can create doted and dashed lines but that’s not getting us anywhere here. To visualize speed variations along the trajectory, we therefore split the original trajectory into its segments, 1429 in this case. Then we can calculate speed for each segment and use a graduated or data defined renderer to show the results:

Speed along trajectory: red = slow to blue = fast

Very unsatisfactory! We had to increase the number of features 1429 times just to show speed variations along the trajectory, even though the original single trajectory feature already contained all the necessary information and QGIS does support geometries with measurement values.

Starting from QGIS 2.14, we have an alternative way to deal with this issue. We can stick to the original single trajectory feature and render it using the new geometry generator symbol layer. (This functionality is also used under the hood of the 2.5D renderer.) Using the segments_to_lines() function, the geometry generator basically creates individual segment lines on the fly:

Segments_to_lines( $geometry) returns a multi line geometry consisting of a line for every segment in the input geometry

Once this is set up, we can style the segments with a data-defined expression that determines the speed on the segment and returns the respective color along a color ramp:

Speed is calculated using the length of the segment and the time between segment start and end point. Then speed values from 0 to 50 km/h are mapped to the red-yellow-blue color ramp:

ramp_color(
  'RdYlBu',
  scale_linear(
    length( 
      transform(
	    geometry_n($geometry,@geometry_part_num),
		'EPSG:4326','EPSG:54027'
		)
    ) / (
      m(end_point(  geometry_n($geometry,@geometry_part_num))) -
      m(start_point(geometry_n($geometry,@geometry_part_num)))
    ) * 3.6,
    0,50,
    0,1
  )
)

Thanks a lot to @nyalldawson for all the help figuring out the details!

While the following map might look just like the previous one in the end, note that we now only deal with the original single line feature:

Similar approaches can be used to label segments or positions along the trajectory without having to break the original feature. Thanks to the geometry generator functionality, we can make direct use of the LinestringM data model for trajectory visualization.

A common use case of the QGIS TimeManager plugin is visualizing tracking data such as animal migration data. This post illustrates the steps necessary to create an animation from bird migration data. I’m using a dataset published on Movebank:

Fraser KC, Shave A, Savage A, Ritchie A, Bell K, Siegrist J, Ray JD, Applegate K, Pearman M (2016) Data from: Determining fine-scale migratory connectivity and habitat selection for a migratory songbird by using new GPS technology. Movebank Data Repository. doi:10.5441/001/1.5q5gn84d.

It’s a CSV file which can be loaded into QGIS using the Add delimited text layer tool. Once loaded, we can get started:

1. Identify time and ID columns

Especially if you are new to the dataset, have a look at the attribute table and identify the attributes containing timestamps and ID of the moving object. In our sample dataset, time is stored in the aptly named timestamp attribute and uses ISO standard formatting %Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S.%f. This format is ideal for TimeManager and we can use it without any changes. The object ID attribute is titled individual-local-identifier.

The dataset contains 128 positions of 14 different birds. This means that there are rather long gaps between consecutive observations. In our animation, we’ll want to fill these gaps with interpolated positions to get uninterrupted movement traces.

2. Configuring TimeManager

To set up the animation, go to the TimeManager panel and click Settings | Add Layer. In the following dialog we can specify the time and ID attributes which we identified in the previous step. We also enable linear interpolation. The interpolation option will create an additional point layer in the QGIS project, which contains the interpolated positions.

When using the interpolation option, please note that it currently only works if the point layer is styled with a Single symbol renderer. If a different renderer is configured, it will fail to create the interpolation layer.

Once the layer is configured, the minimum and maximum timestamps will be displayed in the TimeManager dock right bellow the time slider. For this dataset, it makes sense to set the Time frame size, that is the time between animation frames, to one day, so we will see one frame per day:

Now you can test the animation by pressing the TimeManager’s play button. Feel free to add more data, such as background maps or other layers, to your project. Besides exploring the animated data in QGIS, you can also create a video to share your results.

3. Creating a video

To export the animation, click the Export video button. If you are using Linux, you can export videos directly from QGIS. On Windows, you first need to export the animation frames as individual pictures, which you can then convert to a video (for example using the free Windows Movie Maker application).

These are the basic steps to set up an animation for migration data. There are many potential extensions to this animation, including adding permanent traces of past movements. While this approach serves us well for visualizing bird migration routes, it is easy to imagine that other movement data would require different interpolation approaches. Vehicle data, for example, would profit from network-constrained interpolation between observed positions.

If you find the TimeManager plugin useful, please consider supporting its development or getting involved. Many features, such as interpolation, are weekend projects that are still in a proof-of-concept stage. In addition, we have the huge upcoming challenge of migrating the plugin to Python 3 and Qt5 to support QGIS3 ahead of us. Happy QGISing!

In the previous post, Mickael shared a great map design. The download includes a print composer template, that you can use to recreate the design in a few simple steps:

1. Create a new composition based on a template

Open the Composer manager and configure it to use a specific template. Then you can select the .qpt template file and press the Add button to create a new composition based on the template.

2. Update image item paths

If the template uses images, the paths to the images most likely need to be fixed since the .qpt file stores absolute file paths instead of relative ones.

With these steps, you’re now ready to use the design for your own maps. Happy QGISing!