Paul Shapley's Open Source Geospatial Blog

Install Ubuntu 15.04 (Vivid Vervet) 1. check your Ubuntu version:- lsb_release -a Install Postgresql 2. On the server or your PC (Terminal):- sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install -y postgresql postgresql-contrib Create a database and a user for access Replace DATABASE_NAME_HERE and USER_NAME_HERE with the values you want to use. # this will prompt you for a database password...also note the capital letter 'O' not number '0' (zero) below:- 3. sudo -u postgres createuser -P USER_NAME_HERE sudo -u postgres createdb -O USER_NAME_HERE DATABASE_NAME_HERE Test Connection to Postgresql 4. psql -h localhost -U USER_NAME_HERE DATABASE_NAME_HERE Postgresql will ask you for your password. Then you should see the following: psql (9.3.5) SSL connection (cipher: DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA, bits: 256) Type "help" for help. DATABASE_NAME_HERE => To exit type:- \q To add PostGIS-2.1 support to the database 5. sudo apt-...

'Slashgeo.org' have just posted a new entry siting the following:- "The Google Earth Blog (independent from Google) found out that  Google Earth Pro is now free, it was formerly $400 per year. There hasn’t been an official announcement yet, but as pointed out by a GEB reader,  “the Google Earth licence support page for languages other than English states that from January 20th, 2015 the licence is free.”  The GEB languages other than English list some features available in the Pro version not available in the Free version:  “Although many of the extra features found in Google Earth Pro will only be useful to GIS users, a few features that our readers have expressed interest in using are: the built in movie maker, area and perimeter measurements and the ability to turn off terrain completely.”   You’ll find more details about what the Pro version has to offer on the Google Earth Pro official webpage. Wikipedia lists...

QGIS has become one of the most successful Open Source GIS projects on the planet. From it's early beginnings as not much more than a Shapefile viewer to an ArcGIS alternative coupled with Grass GIS Modules there is very little general spatial functionality missing... well almost. QGIS was never meant to be a convenient field data entry tool and QGIS for mobile was meant to fill the gap however as of December 2014 the project has been refocused to create a touch optimised interface aimed at field work using the QGIS libraries. 'QField' aims to take your pre-prepared QGIS project out into the field and maintain QGIS styling. Some of the promised tools include:- More GPS centric editing. Desktop compatibility. Synchronisation. Project preparation on QGIS Desktop. Simple interface with just a couple of buttons. Switchable use paradigm Built from Qt5, QtQuick 2 and OpenGL. For a proposed list of functions click here . #document ...

I'm always looking for UK free LiDAR sources on the web. Some of the useful (sometimes non-free) ones I've come across are listed below. https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/professional/research/landscapes-and-areas/aerial-survey/archaeology/lidar/ english-heritage - the light fantastic data.gov.uk/dataset/lidar-digital-surface-model vterrain.org/Locations/uk/ lidar-uk.com https://www.geomatics-group.co.uk/geocms/ geomatics-group uk catalogue shapefile Andrew Richman Presentation https://www2.getmapping.com/Products/LiDAR http://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/7f1280cf215da6f8001eae5c2f019fe8 http://www.lidar.co.uk/ http://www.lidarbasemaps.org/ http://lidar.cr.usgs.gov/ If you know of any more please let me know so i can make this a definitive UK listing for Commercial and Free Sources of LiDAR.

Hope you are having a great Christmas. Just wanted to remind the Free and Open Source Geospatial Community about the Grass GIS 7 (Beta 4) release of a couple of days ago. My apologies if this has been copied to social media sites but worth mentioning non-the-less. As a huge fan of this workhorse of a product it has some major new enhancements and features in order to bring it more in line with the rest of the wxPython Geospatial Community. Have a look at the following link: http://grass.osgeo.org/news/39/15/GRASS-GIS-7-0-0-beta4/ Below is a quick example (exported as an animated gif) of how easy it is to produce a series of raster map overlays onto some base lidar data (using the 'r.lake' module and the new animation module) in order to get an idea of the effects of rising river water levels over a thousand year period as a result of global warming at the current sea level rise of 3mm per year (for this demo no other environmental factors have been taken into account). ...

Have you noticed what has happened to GIS in the last five years? It has become a mammoth task to do (essentially) the same thing that we were doing fifteen years ago. That is to disseminate data for users to use and manipulate, only now the technology is so much more complex that potential new users have not only lost interest but the costs and workloads have escalated out of all proportion requiring an new intermediate breed of specialists and consultants each with their own idea of what the end user 'really' needs based on solutions which previously worked for financial, banking and payroll systems. If I want data I don't care how I get it and in whatever format is available in so long as I can 'find' it, 'download' it and 'translate' it, tools that are present even in the most basic GIS package. Now I cannot 'find' it unless I know the correct search term and the correct 'Portal' I cannot 'download' it unless I re...