North River Geographic Systems Inc

Geospatial Problem Solving

QGIS

The TN 911 Project

So next week is the TN GIS meeting at Montgomery Bell State Park. Which will be the first conference I’ve walked into in 2 years and 2 months. I’m doing two things while I’m there – well three:

  • Walk a lot
  • Teach an OSM workshop
  • Give a talk on the 911 project.

So – the 911 project. I actually haven’t said much about it in a while. Well…..it’s gotten interesting.

Back in 2000 I did a talk on PostGIS day about how this had worked and by that point the project was about 2 years old. At that point I had talked to a lot of people in TN on the project and the general feel was that this was a lone wolf project – in other words no one else would want to use it. Plus I was getting a little anxious on how to grow it. I was even advertising it as a “server” – which yes it’s all housed in postgresql/postgis with QGIS as a front end.

So I did something weird and tossed it up on github and started working on it. Cleaning up code. Issuing tickets to myself and generally working. Out of nowhere Kyle Snyder came in and cleaned up some code. Now there’s two of us “doing things”.

So what’s the point? Well the point is I hope more counties in TN actually use it. I’m going to discuss it next week and show a running example. Basically at this point we just about have the TN NG911 standard 95% “running” as published in the manual. Hopefully by next week we have some instructions. I’ve got a few menus set up for QGIS. You get a ton of flexibility “out of the box”. Plus all this cleanup is going to be good for Henry County as I’ll use it to update what they have after some more testing.

The next big thing is I’ve been experimenting with PyQGIS and the discussion between myself and Kyle has been “what can we offload to QGIS and what does postgis do better?”. Do we set up QGIS to do address ranges on roads? Maybe we set up some pre-address or auto-addressing. Possibly that’s a processing toolbox thing. What if we work it all out and leave it as a PostGIS script? We’ll figure it out.

Anyway – It’s pretty exciting. It is a bit messy currently. Kyle’s teaching me about Github Projects. I’m explaining my insane ideas. We’re pushing and pulling all that we can. It is nice to dump all this out into the open for everyone to pick at – maybe someone else in the 911 “address maintenance space” finds it useful.

Need some help? Yell.

Exploring QGIS April 27th-28th 2022

So NRGS has a Exploring QGIS class coming up on April 27th and 28th of 2022. This is a gentle introduction to the the best FOSS4G desktop software you’ll ever use.

Here’s how it’s going to go:

  • Software: QGIS 3.22
  • Location: Virtual
  • Dates: April 27th -28th 2022
  • Two days from 12 to 4 EST
  • $175 – Register here!
  • Certificate for all attendees
  • Because it’s been just a bit – 20% off with Code QGISRocks

So what do we cover? A little bit of everything from the interface to processing, to editing, to making a map. It’s all recorded. It should be fun. Bring other data. Bring Questions. Bring a good sense of humor.

Can’t afford a ticket? Gimme a shout!

Come take a class and support the QGIS Project! To date we’ve pushed about 980 dollars US back to the QGIS Project.

QGIS, 3DEP, and You

I did a demo the other day for some foresters and I almost wanted to walk into traffic by the end of it. Not because of anything with QGIS and LiDAR – but I think I finally got “Virtual Fatigue”.

Part of the demo worked amazingly well. If you’re not familiar with TN’s LiDAR Program most (I think all) of the state is covered in free LiDAR. Yes Free. You can grab a county’s worth of LiDAR data and get to work. Here’s the other thing you need to know – it’s in zLas format. Yes – zLAS – the most annoying of the formats. I have to uncompress it using LAS Liberator. Then there is about 20 minutes of hoping I’m not at the corner of 4 tiles. It’s painful.

PDAL has been the engine that has been making LiDAR viewable in QGIS for a couple of versions now. I don’t tend to use it a lot (because I don’t do a ton of work with LiDAR) but when needed it it’s invaluable. For me the entire crunch of doing anything with lidar has been:

  • up to a 50 GB Download for an entire county
  • Conversion from zlas to laz
  • Define the vertical and horizontal projection of a tile using PDAL.

For the demo I wanted to do something “lidar” for a group of foresters to show them that FOSS4G works and we’re not just some weird hobby. I knew PDAL was being used on the backend of the USGS LiDAR Explorer but had not used it.

You can select an area (this is only for the US) and ONLY GET THAT AREA. I picked a pine plantation that had been partially thinned. I select the area using the interface. Choose my download format and PROJECTION PARAMETERS and then something cool happens. I generate a PDAL Pipeline JSON file and from the command line:

pdal pipeline process.json

I drag and drop the output of the above process into QGIS:

My life just got a lot easier and my blood pressure dropped like 10 points. LiDAR in TN is no longer a multi-hours scripted affair full of yelling. It’s literally pick what you want and then do the thing you want to do. QGIS gets easier. GRASS gets easier. Probably easier for the ESRI users also.

Anyway – check out LiDAR explorer from the USGS (especially if you’re in TN). It’s worth a few minutes of digging to learn about this tool.

Exploring QGIS Schedule

I’ve released the rest of the years training for the exploring QGIS class. There are a lot of things that are the same and a few things that are different – so prepare to be stimulated with this blog update:

  • This year I’m only going to run with the Long term release for training – so we will be sticking with 3.22 for the rest of the year.
  • Registration ends one week before the class – so those of you waiting until the last minute…………….Please don’t.
  • Price stays the same – $175
  • Class is still Virtual and only 4 hours a day (two days total)
  • Class supports the QGIS project
ClassDatesPrice
Exploring QGISApril 27th-28th 2022$175
Exploring QGISJuly 20th 21st 2022$175
Exploring QGISOctober 19th 20th 2022$175

Custom training for companies and conference is still available. I think I have one coming up in Canada and most likely a few other things happening here and there.

You may be saying “Well – that’s only three classes!”. Correct. In May the Intermediate class is making another appearance. In June the final class should be available. So I’ll be teaching every month (in theory). More news on that is coming shortly. I’m in the middle of putting the intermediate class together after the rewrite. The “final” as in advanced is being written. It’s a lot – but I’m happy to finally start getting this finalized.

Come take a class. If you’re doing something cool and can’t afford $175 – give me a shout. You may be eligible for “The NRGS No Thrills Scholarship program.”

Add Geoprocessing Tools to the QGIS Toolbar

I am going to attempt a post a week on something and I’m already behind.

All of my work is falling into one of two categories at the moment: PostGIS and QGIS. At the moment I’m loading data into PostGIS using QGIS. So I’m:

  • I’m looking at the data going “What the fork is this”
  • When I figure it out it’s then “I’m going to push this in and toss some permissions on it”.

It’s not like pushing data into PostGIS is a complicated process these days: OGR2OGR, QGIS, and I’m pretty sure GRASS can import – so it’s whatever makes my life easier which is QGIS at the moment. So generally I like the “Export to PostgreSQL” tool in the Processing Toolbox. Once you use it it floats to the top under the Recently Used Geoprocessing tools.

At that point in my existence it’s literally two clicks away. One could really “Type it out” using the locate toolbar so no clicking is involved – BUT – what if I wanted that geoprocessing tool on my toolbar.

While updating one of the two QGIS Classes – I stumbled into this “one really cool trick”. It all is hidden under the options menu. Go to Settings -> Options and navigate to the processing tab.

Scary Right? It’s not that bad. Here is the hardest part of this whole thing – Click on Menus and you’ll see a host of options. Click on QGIS (native c++) and look for Buffer. Click on Buffer and click on the checkbox to “Add Button in Toolbar”. You may need to dig around to find other tools. QGIS keeps them divided into 3 categories.

Close QGIS

Re-Open It.

Hey you have a brand new toolbar called Processing Algorithms and you’ve got a brand new button with a pic on it that looks like an Boomerang (or upside down ‘L’). Press that and you have the buffer geoprocessing tool ready for use.

So – entirely necessary? In my case not really – it is nice to have access to it in one click. It is nice from the standpoint that I can take an inexperienced user and customize the interface to where they don’t need to know where this tool is or how to get to it – just push a button. You can keep adding tools that you want up there – in this case I really only wanted two. When I’m done I’ll “turn them off” but for now I like my extra toolbar.