Jeff at Vector One asks, “Why is there so little geospatial analysis?” I can think of any number of possible reasons:
- People aren’t aware of it, or what it can do; for some people, geographic analysis ends when you put a point on a map
- It can involve advanced analytical and statistical techniques that are challenging to learn
- Commercial software can be expensive, and difficult to learn; ArcGIS’s Spatial Analyst and Geostatistical Analyst extensions list at $2500 apiece.
While there are many freeware programs available for geospatial data analysis (I’ll post on some of them on the future), there’s one program I’d select as the best choice to address the above issues: GeoDA, from the University Of Illinois U/C. And that’s as much for its teaching materials and documentation as it is for its capabilities. There’s a 100+-page user’s guide, a 200+-page workbook that’s a mini-course on analyzing spatial data, multiple publications, dozens of sample datasets, even a QuickTime movie. It’s by no means complete; for example, there’s no geostatistical interpolation capabilities in this program (e.g. variograms, Kriging). But just by itself, it’s a great introduction to many techniques for analyzing spatial data correlation. It’s only for Windows now, but they’re working on a cross-platform open source port for Windows, Linux and Mac; no word on when that might become available.
Other posts in the GIS Tools series
- Converting E00 Vector Data To Shapefiles - A Free And Fairly Painless Approach
- Simplifying Line And Polygon Shapefiles
- Converting US Census TIGER Data Into Shapefiles For Free
- Converting Shapefiles and ArcINFO Coverages To AutoCAD DXF Format
- Converting Point Shapefiles To Text/Spreadsheet Format
- Converting Text/Spreadsheet Files To Point Shapefile Format
- An Easier Way To Convert Shapefiles to Text/Spreadsheet Format
- Converting Text/Spreadsheet Data To Line/Area Shapefiles
- Full Resolution Raster Map Combining, Subsetting And Export With The TatukGIS Viewer
- Viewing Vector Data In The TatukGIS Viewer
- The LizardTech Stand-Alone MRSID Viewer
- Converting Raster Area Images Into Polygon Shapefiles
- SAGA GIS 2.0 Released
- ILWIS GIS Is Now Open Source
- AVHRR Analysis Add-On For ILWIS
- Advanced Image Mosaicking With Regeemy
- A Free GIS Viewer (And Cheap GIS Editor) For Windows Mobile Systems
- Updates For MapWindow And Saga GIS Programs
- Updates For Two Open-Source GIS Programs
- Putting Together A Basic Linux GIS Workstation
- Free Online Courses For Open Source GIS
- GIS-Oriented Linux Distributions
- Tabular Terrain Elevation Data
- Quick Data Gridding With QuikGrid
- A Good Introduction To Geospatial Data Analysis
- Converting Digital Elevation Models To Shapefile/DXF Contours
- Fixing "Broken" Shapefiles
- A Simple DBF Editor
- Two Online Vector GIS/GPS/KML Conversion Utilities
- Another Shapefile Repair Tool
- Quantum GIS (qGIS) Version 0.10 Released
- Online Raster Map Georeferencing/Registration With Map Rectifier
- Using The Demo Version Of Global Mapper As A Raster/Vector Data Viewer
- New Stable Release Of MapWindow GIS
- The Big List Of Free Metadata Software I
- The Big List Of Free Metadata Software II
- GIS On A Stick
Thx for your blog. I read it every day via feed. always good news.
Greetings, Peter
Another happy reader reporting in!
:)
Thanks
Why don’t you try gvSIG. It’s a Spanish free open software developed by Jaume I University and supported by Valencia’s Government.
http://www.gvsig.gva.es/
Hi Leszek
Another gem on your blog. You are worth every donation possible. Ans I am happy that you want to attack geospatial analysis.
Cheers
Askan.
Thanks for the comment, Andres. I’ve mentioned gvSIG briefly on this website before:
http://freegeographytools.com/2007/updates-for-two-open-source-gis-programs
http://freegeographytools.com/2007/putting-together-a-basic-linux-gis-workstation
but I’ve been meaning to look at it in more detail for quite a while. Of all the JUMP derivatives I’ve seen, it has the most promise.