This workshop, includes tutorials and exercises and is structured for persons new to GIS and GPS. The team conducting the workshop has over a decade of experience in using and teaching the subject. The workshop is structured to give a balance between essential geographical theory (a quick re-hash for most participants), understanding spatial data collection and management, these being important for utilizing a GIS effectively, and learning to use a GIS software. You will be taught to use a GIS software to make quality maps, and undertake some spatial analyses. For this we will be using Google Earth Engine, and Quantum GIS (QGIS), which is among the most popular, free, and open source GIS software.
In today's world we are highly dependent on smart-phones to find location based services. In our daily life we use this technology to find nearby services or facilities, it may be a place to eat or finding the nearest pertol pump, we use our phones and computers to search them online. Most often, the results for these searches are not just a list of places, but are also displayed as maps, which help us to navigate to these places. All this is possible due to the growing wealth of Spatial Data. But what remains unknow or hidden is the back bone of collecting and managing spatial data, which falls within the domian of Geographical Information Systems (GIS).
In recent times, the use of GIS and GPS (Global Positioning Systems) have become essential tools for a range of applications including reporting of election results, analysising public respone to opinion polls, and also to help in natural disaster management and mapping the spread of epidemic diseases. However, fundamental concepts of GIS are not available to public, outside a formal academic institution.
The focus of this two-day workshop is to fill in this gap, through intensive and hands-on training. The aim of this workshop is that, at the end of the two days, participants would have learnt how to collect spatial data using a GPS/smartphone, will know the basics of managing this data, how to visualize their data, ask some interesting questions, and more importantly present these results as high quality maps, including interactive online maps.
Some key topics that we will be covering in this workshop are:
- A quick re-hash of geographical concepts and jargon essential for using a GIS.
- Spatial data collection using GPS units and GPS enabled smartphones.
- Management of data.
- Data visualization and analysis using Google Earth Engine.
- Import, view, edit, and manage spatially explicit data in a number of vector formats in QGIS.
- Digitise maps.
- Analyse and manipulate vector data using geo-processing routines, database features, research and analysis tools.
- Convert between different data formats and upload data to web based applications such as OpenStreetMap or GoogleMaps.
