QGIS User Group – Wales

2013

A big thank you to our sponsors!!

A big thank you for the venue

• Kevin Williams – Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council

• Shaun Lewis– Brecon Beacons National Park Authority

Agenda

Start Item Speaker

09:30 Register and coffee  

10:00 Introduction and objectives Kevin Williams and Shaun Lewis

10:20 Developing Plugins for an Open Source community Matt Walker (Astun Technology)

10:50 Discussion  

11:20 QGIS in action NPT CBC and BBNPA

11:50 Discussion  

12:20 Lunch and networking  

13:00 Migrating to open source - the challenges Kevin Williams and Shaun Lewis

13:15 ExeGesIS - QGIS future developments Crispin Flower

13:35 Open discussion  

14:35 Break  

14:50 Ordnance Survey Pete Roberts

15:20 Where do we go from here? Kevin Williams and Shaun Lewis

16:20 Close  

• Approached by Simon Miles who runs the UK group.

• Promised during a drinking session in Nottingham FOSS4G!

Why QGIS Wales?

According to the Open Source Initiative (OSI, 2009)

“Open source is a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in.”

Open Source Initiative, 2009

‘Going Open Source’

Objectives (some ideas)

• Promoting the use of QGIS, with its associated cost savings and benefits.

• Sharing Knowledge and experiences, providing real examples of use.

• Sharing training resources including digital and class-based.• Sharing and collaboration on common code (plugins, SQL etc)• Removal of duplicated effort. E.g. styling, symbology,

configuration etc• Feedback and sharing with the UK group.• Facilitate a service to share development, e.g. rhodecode,

mercurial, Github etc.  We already use rhodecode in NPT.• Anything else ...

Background

• 20 x MapInfo v7 licences• 3 x MapInfo v12 licences + 1 concurrent• ~25 Users of ProPrinter

• 1000s of .tab files (organised in 2011)

PlanningSystem Web Maps

External Datasets

RoW System

.tab.shp

What we wanted to achieve

Viewer

DesktopGIS

Data to be migrated to PostGIS

INSPIRE datasets

Definitive

External

Web Maps

Planning System

RoW System

.shp files• One off datasets• Scrap datasets• New datasets

.tab files• Data that no longer

gets updated

Migrating to QGIS

Become a user

Gain enthusiasm

Collect user information

Training for users

Migrate data

Migrate users

Configure install

1-on-1 support session

RemoveMapInfo

RemoveProPrinter

The challenges

• Doesn’t edit .tab files

• Doesn’t trace• There’s no support

• High demand on support from staff

• Crashes occasionally

Migrate to PostGIS / .shp.

Collaboration between groups to develop and support.

Invest in training and provide on-demand support.

Identify the cause (e.g. plugins). Save regularly.

You can’t do everything for free…

We had to invest somewhere:

• External company to set up Geoserver & PostgreSQL / PostGIS

• FME

• Training

Neath Port Talbot Background

Ex-ESRI Products :-32 x arcview single seat15 x arcview concurrent6 x arcinfo concurrent6 x Network analyst4 arceditor2 x spatial analyst2 x arcpublisher2 x 3d analystArcsdeArcgis serverArcims

• Now we have :-– Over 100 QGIS users– Postgis database with nearly 500 layers!– A ‘real’ gazetteer system– Multi-user feature level editing with version

control.– Pgrouting soon– OGC compliant (consumes WMS/WFS etc)– A platform for INSPIRE– Far better support

Neath Port Talbot Background

QGIS use

• Trained over 100 users in QGIS 1.8 and 2.0• Running on both thick and thin client• Mobile – running on windows 8 tablet• Spatial databases – postgis, oracle spatial

(legacy), spatialite• Developed python plugins• Integrated to back-office systems.• QGIS Used by many disciplines including social

services, education, community first etc. Not your normal GIS users.

• LDP produced entirely with QGIS.

• End of Intro