Free Geography Tools

The final part of the series. Part One, Part Two, Part Three. All parts will be regularly updated as more programs come to my attention.

SAGA

Type: Freeware, open-source

Platform: Windows, Linux

Last update: 2007

Personal experience: Medium

Can’t say that I’m a big fan of the interface, and some of the modules aren’t fully documented, but boy does this have a lot of functionality. See this post for a more complete listing.

SavGIS

Type: Freeware

Platform: Windows

Last update: 2008

Personal experience: None

This GIS seems to have a lot of functionality, but I’ve put off looking at it because the documentation is available only in French. But there is an English version available (Spanish, too), so I’m sure I’ll get around to it one of these days. Here’s a link to Google’s English translation of the features page.

SpringGIS

Type: Freeware, open-source

Platform: Windows, Linux

Last update: 2007?

Personal experience: None

From Brazil, available in Portuguese, Spanish and English. Lots of English documentation available. Again, haven’t really looked at it in depth, but it does look like it has a fairly large feature set. Biggest disadvantage seems to be the requirement for vector data to be in their unique SPRING format, but translators are available for standard formats like shapefile, MIF, E00 and DBF

Terrain Analysis System

Type: Freeware

Platform: Windows

Last update: 2003

Personal experience: None

As a hydrologist and geomorphologist, I was very discouraged by the lack of an affordable software package capable of advanced modeling of catchment processes. TAS is designed to meet the research needs of environmental modellers and managers while being simple enough to use in the classroom. Some geographic information systems (GIS) possess some of the capabilities required by hydrologists, geomorphologists, and other environmental researchers; however, these programs are usually prohibitively expensive. In addition, very few programs compile the number of functions available in TAS in one stand-alone package. Often, such programs rely on other GISs for visualization and standard spatial analysis. TAS can display both raster and vector types of geographic data, and possesses many of the standard spatial analysis function that the environmental modeller requires. The graphical user interface is designed with ease of use in mind. As such, TAS is ideal for lab exercises in introductory to advanced level courses in physical geography, geomorphology, hydrology, environmental science, and watershed management.

TNTLite

Type: Limited version of commercial software

Platform: Windows, Macintosh

Last update: 2008

Personal experience: None

Contains most of the features of MicroImages full TNT program, but has limitations on the total number of objects you can have in a project for the free version:

• Project Files – No limit on size of .rvc files. No limit on number of objects in a file.
• Rasters – 314,368 totals cells, maximum dimension of 1024.
  Examples: 1024 x 307, 614 x 512, 307 x 1024.
• Vectors – 500 polygons, 1500 lines, 1500 points, 1500 labels. (no limit on nodes)
• CADs – 500 elements, 5 blocks
• TINs – 1500 nodes
• Databases – 1500 records per table

TreeSAP

Type: Freeware, open-source

Platform: Windows, Linux, Macintosh

Last update: 2005?

Personal experience: None

From abstract of article in Progress in Spatial Data Handling: 12th International Symposium on Spatial Data Handling:

Spatial reasoning is a fundamental part of human cognition, playing an important role in structuring our activities and relationships with the physical world. A substantial body of spatial data is now available. In order to make effective use of this large quantity of data, the focus of GIS tools must shift towards helping a user derive relevant, high quality information from the data available. Standard GIS tools have lacked focus in this area, with querying capabilities being limited, and requiring a user to have specialized knowledge in areas such as set theory, or Structured Query Language (SQL). A fundamental issue in standard GIS is that, by relying entirely on numerical methods when working with spatial data, vagueness and imprecision can not be handled. Alternatively, qualitative methods for working with spatial data have been developed to address some key limitations in other standard numerical systems. TreeSap is a GIS application that applies qualitative reasoning, with a strong emphasis on providing a user with powerful and intuitive query support. TreeSap’s query interface is presented, along with visualization strategies that address the issue of conveying complex qualitative information to a user. The notion of a relative feature is introduced as an alternative approach to representing spatial information.

Carl P. L. Schultz, Timothy R. Clephane, Hans W. Guesgen and Robert Amor
Department of Computer Science, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

uDIG

Type: Freeware, open-source

Platform: Windows, Linux, Macintosh

Last update: 2008

Personal experience: Minimal

I’ve been waiting for uDIG 1.1 to get out of Release Candidate mode before looking at in more depth; after 14 Release Candidates, that should be Real Soon Now. Lots of online documentation, tutorials and videos.

VR GIS

Type: Freeware, open-source

Platform: Windows

Last update: 2006

Personal experience: None

The description on the website is intriguing, if a bit confusing. Another one to go into the “gotta look at it someday” hopper.