01 Introduction: GIS ideas and concepts
ITS computing Skills 2022. GIS with QGIS. Ian Philips
Learning Objectives
• Gain a basic understanding of what GIS is and its relevance to transport studies
• Understand the structure of some of the key data types and file formats
• Import pre-cleaned vector data into QGIS and navigate basic QGIS features
• Select a subset of the data
• Make a map showing point, line and polygon features and export it.
• Understand the key cartographic elements that must be present to allow
interpretation of a map
In this part you will learn about the following key concepts:
• GIS ideas and concepts - we very briefly introduce some key GIS concepts and ideas.
• Opening QGIS and essential features - We then explain what the main components of
QGIS are, explain how to set up a project and save work and what some of the most
useful buttons do
• Downloading and loading data - we show you how to get some data we have prepared
for the workshop and load it into QGIS
• Style and select features - change the way features look on the screen
• Making maps - Make a map which you can export and include in a document
What is GIS?
GIS is an abbreviation. Sometimes it is used to mean Geographic Information System and
sometimes it is used to mean Geographic Information Science. A more formal definition
of a Geographical Information System is:
A powerful set of tools for collecting, storing, retrieving at will, transforming and displaying spatial data from the
real world (Burrough, 1986)
The emphasis here is on pieces of software like QGIS. In practical terms, a Geographic
Information System is a database to store data, a calculator which can manipulate and
analyse data, linked to a visualisation window to show results. GIS software like QGIS also
has a Graphical User Interface (GUI) with menus and buttons which lets the user ‘do stuff’.
Part 1 focuses on the basic features of the Geographic Information System application
called QGIS.
A more formal definition of Geographical Information Science is given by
Goodchild, (1992) who argues that
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Geographical Information Science involves research that investigates spatial data acquisition, spatial statistics,
modelling and theories of spatial data, development of analytical tools and consideration of the management and
ethics of working with spatial data.
As an introduction, the Wikipedia entry contains a lot of information. In the further reading
section, there are references to crucial GIS textbooks for a more formal treatment of key
GIS concepts.
[Link]
There are other terms you may come across, which define areas of study related to GIS
where spatial data is used. There are technical academic differences between these terms,
but in practice, they get used interchangeably. This range of terms might sound confusing,
but they are all related. Some of these terms are listed below.
“geo-computation”. Geocomputation is associated with computational methods that have
been customised to address the unique characteristics of spatial data.
“Geographic Data Science” “spatial data analytics”, "spatial data science. The emphasis here
is on a branch of data science at the nexus of statistics, computer science and quantitative
geography, using computer programming to analyse often big spatial and spatio-temportal
data.
“Geographic methods” Geographic methods is a term used by the makers of ArcGIS to
define and approach to location-based analysis and decision making using spatial data.
Why should transport practitioners and students learn GIS?
Transport is an inherently spatial and geographic topic of study. GIS, in both of the systems
and science contexts described above, is vital for anyone studying transport, because we
must have tools and methods to understand the needs, impacts and implications of
transport in different places.
GIS helps us to answer many questions which are relevant to transport practitioners,
researchers and students such as:
• Where is accessible and how do we measure accessiblity?
• What is the catchment area for a service? - e.g. what is the catchment area for health
service provision?
• What is the spatial pattern? - are there clusters - e.g. where are there places with
similar patterns of car ownership and use?
• Which routes might make effective cycle infrastructure?
• Where are people vulnerable to car dependence?
• How can we map the potential for place-based decarbonisation?
Learning how to use GIS software like QGIS is a useful skill for those working in transport.
There are many related professions and academic disciplines who also use GIS and spatial
data. Understanding GIS concepts and being able to apply GIS methods is a way to
communicate and work collaboratively to develop integrated solutions to problems.
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Learning to use GIS software is also an advantageous start point for people wanting to
learn and apply GIScience, Geocomputation, and related data science approaches.
Why do we teach QGIS instead of ArcGIS?
QGIS is free to download and use. This is free software. ArcGIS is the leading propriatary
GIS software. It is very expensive. The university has a licence for ArcGIS, but not all
students will have access to commercial software after completing the course. QGIS is
becoming popular with many organisations. QGIS has many similar features to ArcGIS so it
is relatively easy to switch from one software to the other.
The GIS concepts we teach using this resource are useful whether you are using QGIS or
ArcGIS or even writing computer code to perform GIS tasks.
For more information about free and open source software FOSS see:
[Link]
For more information about similarities between QGIS and ArcGIS see:
[Link]
Types of data used in GIS
Layers
Maps can be made of several layers of data as seen here:
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layers in a GIS
source:[Link]
g
Layers are an important GIS concept. Each layer represents one type of entity. One layer for
roads, one for elevation, one for administrative boundaries and so on. Each layer has 2
main components: spatial information which tells us where each entity is and attribute
information which describes the entity.
A GIS layer also has a structure. There are a number of ways of representing places by
organising the spatial data in different structures. Each layer has a particular data
structure, in the following sections, we describe common types of data structure.
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What is in a GIS layer? Adapted from Burrough and McDonnell (1998)
Vector data
Vector data represents the features of the world as either ‘points’ ‘lines’ or ‘areas’ (also
called polygons).
Each type of feature is displayed in the GIS as a distinct layer. A layer will only contain
either points, or lines, or polygons. It is also good practice to have different layers for
different types of line features. For example, it is good to have a layer for roads and another
for rivers.
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Vector data
Raster data:
‘In its simplest form, a raster consists of a matrix of cells (or pixels) organised into rows
and columns (or a grid) where each cell contains a value representing information, such as
temperature. Rasters are digital aerial photographs, imagery from satellites, digital
pictures, or even scanned maps’.
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Raster data, source: [Link]
Network data
A network dataset takes a line dataset and defines its topology explicitly. Defining topology
means having data tables that explicitly list which lines are connected and at which nodes.
In its simplest form, this means recording the connections between the ends of different
lines. Data in this form is often called a graph as the branch of mathematics that deals with
networks is called graph theory.
network data, source: [Link]
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Data formats
Data file formats refer to how data is stored on your computer.
There are many different data formats which can be used to store each type of data
structure. For example, there are several data formats which store vector data and several
which store raster data.
QGIS can handle a vast number of different data formats. For an introduction to data
formats see [Link] as well as the further reading
in the appendix.
In the exercises in this resource, we will start by using a file format called “Shapefile” as it is
a very widely used type of vector GIS data format. The Shapefile format was developed by
ESRI who make the commercial GIS software ArcGIS (ArcGIS is also available on university
computers).
The Shapefile format appears on your computer as several files which may seem a little
confusing. Each file contains a different type of information that the GIS needs to represent
the GIS layer.
The .shp file contains information about where things are the spatial data The .dbf file
contains information about the place, the attribute data
NB. If you ever want to share a Shapefile with someone, you have to send the whole group
of files.
A shapefile is a group of files. It is a common file format
While shapefiles are still very commonly used, they have many limitations. Resulting in a
campaign against shapefiles.
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There are other types of GIS files which contain all the information a shape file contains but
in one file. Two examples are GeoJSON (files end with .json or .geojson) and geo-package
(files end with .gpkg).
Coordinate reference systems
The world is not flat, but computer screens are. Coordinate systems, also known as
coordinate reference systems (CRS), allow GIS to represent the curved surface of the Earth
on a flat screen or page.
How do we fit a curving earth onto a flat piece of paper
Image source comes from this presentation: [Link] .
The projection is a mathematical formula explaining how places in the real world which are
on a near spherical globe can be represented on a flat map. More information on
projections and coordinate systems can be found in GIS text books.
Coordinate Reference Systems (CRS) refer to different ways of defining X and Y
coordinates. Broadly they fall into two categories:
• Geographical Coordinate Systems: latitude and longitude (in degrees) are used to
represent any place on the Earth
• Projected Coordinate Systems: distances (in metres) from an origin point are used to
represent a small part of the Earth, e.g. a country. The advantage of a projected CRS is
that it is easier to calculate properties such as distance and area as coordinates are in
metres.
You can find a catalogue of different co-ordinate reference systems at
[Link]
CRSs are often referred to by the EPSG number. The European Petroleum Survey Group
publishes a database of different coordinate systems. Two useful projections to commit to
memory are:
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• 4326 - the World Geodetic System 1984 which is a widely used geographical
coordinate system, used in GPS datasets and the .geojson file format.
• 27700 - the British National Grid. A projected co-ordinate system used in the UK.
QGIS can transform your data from one CRS to another. QGIS also uses “on the fly
projection” so that layers with different CRS can be shown on screen together.
Co-ordinate systems are a complex topic. If you want to know more here is a link to more
information
Visualisation and spatial analysis
Organising GIS data into layers allows us to visualise and carry out spatial analysis.
We can carry out analysis of individual layers. For example, in a polygon layer of
administrative zones, we may have an attribute representing car ownership. We can
compute the mean number of cars per zone. We can make a map coloured to show the
differing levels of car ownership. This visualisation of the data is a type of analysis
We can also carry out analyses which involve multiple layers. For example, how many bus
stops (using a point layer of bus stops) are there within each zone (a layer of
administrative zone). We can analyse this by providing summary statistics of the mean
number of bus stops per zone, and we can also analyse visually by presenting the
information on the map.
There are many different spatial analysis techniques and many visualization and mapping
techniques.
[acknowledgement: This resource includes materials from several resources including [Link]
intro/ by Robin Lovelace, Malcolm Morgan and Ian Philips, An introduction to QGIS 2 for ITS students by Ian Philips,
Principles of GIS a module previously taught by the School of Geography at Leeds University by Nick Hood, Paul Norman,
Helen Durham, Rachel Oldroyd and an introduction to QGIS taught by Rachel Oldroyd at LIDA.]
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