Intro slides form the first regional UK QGIS user group meeting, held in Wales on the 4th December 2013

1. QGIS User Group – Wales
2013

2. A big thank you to our sponsors!!

3. A big thank you for the venue

4. • Kevin Williams
– Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council
• Shaun Lewis
– Brecon Beacons National Park Authority

5. Agenda
Start
Item
Speaker
09:30
Register and coffee
10:00
Introduction and objectives
10:20
Developing Plugins for an Open Source community Matt Walker (Astun Technology)
10:50
Discussion
11:20
QGIS in action
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
Kevin Williams and Shaun Lewis
NPT CBC and BBNPA

6. Why QGIS Wales?
• Approached by Simon Miles who runs the
UK group.
• Promised during a drinking session in
Nottingham FOSS4G!

7. „Going Open Source‟
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

8. 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 ...

9. Background
• 20 x MapInfo v7 licences
• 3 x MapInfo v12 licences + 1 concurrent
• ~25 Users of ProPrinter
• 1000s of .tab files (organised in 2011)

10. What we wanted to achieve

11. Data to be migrated to PostGIS
INSPIRE
datasets
.shp files
• Definitive datasets
One off
• Scrap datasets
• New datasets
RoW
System
.tab files
• External that no longer
Data
gets updated
Planning
System
Web Maps

12. Migrating to QGIS
Become
a user
Migrate
data
Gain
enthusiasm
Collect user
information
Training for
users
1-on-1 support
session
Migrate
users
Configure
install
Remove
MapInfo
Remove
ProPrinter

13. The challenges
• Doesn’t edit .tab files
Migrate to PostGIS / .shp.
• Doesn’t trace
• There’s no support
Collaboration between groups
to develop and support.
• High demand on
support from staff
Invest in training and provide
on-demand support.
• Crashes occasionally
Identify the cause (e.g.
plugins). Save regularly.

14. You can’t do everything for free…
We had to invest somewhere:
• External company to set up Geoserver &
PostgreSQL / PostGIS
• FME
• Training

15. Neath Port Talbot Background
Ex-ESRI Products :32 x arcview single seat
15 x arcview concurrent
6 x arcinfo concurrent
6 x Network analyst
4 arceditor
2 x spatial analyst
2 x arcpublisher
2 x 3d analyst
Arcsde
Arcgis server
Arcims

16. Neath Port Talbot Background
• 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

17. 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.

18. • End of Intro