My Powerful Geospatial Suite of Free GIS

These are the freely available applications and services that make up my own personal free GIS. Individually, many freely available applications do not of themselves constitute a full geographic information system, but when these are all pulled together within one suite of tools...Well, it is remarkable what someone can do without spending a cent. (And without needing to spend an enormous amount of time developing your own applications out of open source components or needing to learn, or install, complex applications, such as GRASS GIS.)

To all of you wonderful and generous developers out there who have spent your own resources to create these applications/services, I give you a sincere and heart-felt thank you for making it so easy and wonderful for the rest of us. Thank you.

For a more comprehensive freeware software list, see FreeGIS.org.

For a more comprehensive list of both commercial and non-commercial applications, see the VerySpatial: Geotechnologies Roundup.

This post is an update of my previous listing of freeware and open source GIS options.

GEOCODING

• BatchGeocode.com
• By far the very best free geocoder out there. In fact this is the only free geocoder that I am aware of that can handle batch jobs. Fantastic.
• Uses the Yahoo! Maps Geocoding API, so the returned lat/long are exactly where Yahoo! Maps would have placed them. That's a world of an improvement over TIGER/Line-based geocoders.
• There is also a single address lookup tool.
• Total online web 2.0 application. No software to download.
• Geocoding limit is 7,000 addresses per computer per day (limit imposed by Yahoo!).
• ** The BatchGeocode.com blog announced that Google Maps has recently released an geocoding API and development is underway to use this new functionality, which will include Europe and Japan.

• ajmGeocode PE
• This was my favorite free geocoder before discovering BatchGeocode.com.
• Requires free registration.
• Geocoding limit is 50 addresses per day.
• Seems pointless to even mention this now that BatchGeocode.com is here.

GIS PROCESSING

• SAGA GIS :: A System for an Automated Geographical Analysis
• This is not the most intuitive application out there, but once you get familiar with the interface it is incredibly powerful. Here are some highlights:
• Create a point shapefile from geocoded addresses (table containing XY)
• Shapefile utilities, including geometry conversion, merge, table join.
• Convert E00 to shapefile
• Georeferencing
• Powerful analysis tools for both grids and shapefiles, including kriging and calculus functions.
• Interpolate to raster.
• Multiple regression
• Terrain analysis
• SAGA is completely open source.
• Provides a manual (PDF)

• fGIS: Forestry GIS -- (Download Site)
• As reported here, fGIS is no longer freely available as of November 7, 2005. Big time bummer. However, this page states: “You can continue to use and freely share versions of fGIS released before November 7, 2005.” Older versiona of fGIS can be downloaded from ForestPal.com.
• More user-friendly interface than SAGA.
• There are some great utilities available in fGIS that are hard to find elsewhere.
• Powerful shapefile editing capabilities.
• Shapefile utilities: clip, merge, table join, select, intersectct
• 3D view
• Nice map layout features
• Georeferencing tools
• Create a point shapefile from geocoded addresses (table containing XY)

• QGIS: Quantum GIS
• This is the most versatile application in this list as it runs on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Unix. Just the other day, someone asked me about an affordable GIS app for their Mac and I sent them to QGIS.
• Another thing that makes QGIS very unique is its native ability to work with PostGIS, a PostgreSQL geodatabase.
• Can read numerous vector file formats, including shapefiles and MapInfo formats.
• API supported (which is nice for a free application)
• Provides a 76 page manual (PDF)

• DIVA-GIS
• This excellent user-friendly application contains numerous GIS utilities and spatial analysis functions. Here are some highlights:
• Interpolation, geometry conversion, distance, autocorrelation, regression, select by polygon, table to point.
• DIVA-GIS also offers numerous specialized models and tools for analyzing biodiversity data.
• Provides a 76 page manual (PDF)

• Christine GIS Viewer 1.2
• I am fond of this little freeware application because of its small size (0.97 MB), very user-friendly interface (similar in ways to ArcView 3), and its simplicity. Many users of GIS simply want to be able to download some TIGER/Line files and join them to some Census data to create static maps. This is the software I always recommend for such purposes.
• Standard simple functions such as table join, selection, query attributes, graduated color symbology.
• The processes are scriptable but the UI is not.

SPATIAL STATISTICS

• GeoDa: Spatial Analysis Software
• Definitely one of my favorites, I have written about GeoDa before.
• This easy-to-use application is fantastic for exploring, visualizing, and analyzing spatial datasets. Some highlights include:
• Centroids and thiessen polygons
• Smoothing
• ESDA (Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis)
• Regression
• Spatial statistics, including spatial autocorrelation
• One of the powerful features of GeoDa is the linking and brushing between all tables, maps, and graphs. For example, select the outliers on a box-plot graph and these features are also highlighted on all other charts, tables, and maps.
• Shapefile and attribute analysis only. Use SAGA (above) for raster analysis.
• In the bulleted list, I pointed out mainly the spatial analysis tools in which GeoDa specializes. However, I do want to point out that this application does indeed have numerous standard GIS functionality, such as table joins, attribute calculations, table to points, etc. If GeoDa were to add just a few small standard GIS functions to its repertoire, it could very well serve as an independent GIS application.
• One other thing that must be pointed out is the most excellent documentation. In particular, the 244 page Exploring Spatial Datwith GeoDaDa: A Workbook (PDF) serves as an entire course on spatial analysis.

• STARS: Space-Time Analysis of Regional Systems
• Functionality similar to GeoDa, but much more flexible and dynamic as it is completely open source (written in Python).
• Python developed, open source, cross-platform. The sample application distributed with the code is simply an example of the applications that can be developed using STARS.
• Anyone interested in open source Python GIS should take a look at PySAL.

LINUX GIS TOOLS FOR THE LINUX-INTIMIDATED

There are some fantastic open source resources out there that people swear work so wonderful on the Linux platform. However, if you are entirely dependent on Windows or merely dabble in Linux (like me), compiling and installing the applications can be more difficult than actually using them. Even if you can get your hands on a good binary file, it is likely that you will not have all of the required dependencies. OK, you can see my Linux frustration here. Anyway, here are a couple of tools that make it easy for absolutely anyone to install the applications and so the only remaining obstacle is using them‚…

• Sourcepole: GIS - Knoppix
• Bootable Linux CD with pre-installed GIS applications. This means that you go to any PC that can boot from CD, and you‚’re ready to run. Easy as pie.
• The website has a complete list of the applications, but here are some highlights:
• GRASS
• UMN MapServer
• PostGIS
• MySQL
• GPS tools

• HostGIS - Linux
• Now, I have not actually installed this or played around with it yet, but perhaps if I have a free weekend sometime I'll give it a shot on my home computer.
• HostGIS Linux is a Slackware Linux/GNU distribution containing all of the applications you will need to run a completely open source GIS server.
• Wow, wow, wow, wow!!!
• Installations include Apache, Postgres, MySQL, MapServer, MapLab, sample datasets, and more.
• Here is the documentation.

REMOTE SENSING

• ScanMagic
• This is the best all-in-one free remote sensing application that I have used.
• ScanEx offers two different freeware applications, ScanMagic Lite and ScanMagic LL. These two offer similar features, but not exactly the same. Download both to get the full potential from their offerings.
• Between the two applications, functionality includes:
• Over 60 raster format support
• 10 vector format support
• Image processing functions
• Map projections
• Export/printing

VIRTUAL GLOBES

• Google Earth
• Do I even need to write something here? GE is a wonderful and exciting application that is impacting the geospatial community in profound ways.
• There are some fantastic free tools out there for converting shapefiles into GE’s KML format. A good one is Shape2Earth. Of course, MapInfo supports exporting to KML and there are numerous 3^rd party ArcGIS extensions as well.

• NASA World Wind
• With the recent discussions surrounding the legality of using the free version of Google Earth at work, NASA World Wind might prove to be a more legal option.

• ArcGIS Explorer
• I have not even downloaded this application yet, which is still in Beta. However, the James Fee GIS Blog has been doing an excellent job describing the application.
• This will be the only virtual globe that I am aware of that can stream ArcIMS data, which is fantastic.

DIGITIZING / VECTORIZING

• WinTopo Raster to Vector Converter
• Includes powerful tools for heads-up and one-touch digitizing. Highlights include:
• Extract centers and edges
• Polyline smoothing and reduction
• Support multiple GIS and CAD formats

OTHER MISCELLANEOUS FREEWARE APPLICATIONS/SERVICES (that I use)

• CarbonTools
• An ‚“Open-Geospatial .NET development toolkit‚”
• In my opinion, the power of the .NET framework is the powerful IDE. Those C# and VB GIS developers should take a look at CarbonTools.

• GMapEZ: Google Maps EZ
• GMapEZ provides public JavaScripts that developers can reference within their HTML code to quickly and easily generate customized Google Maps.
• I used this service in the Friday Night Hangout (IE-Only) application as well as ArcMap2GMap.