Andrew Cutts - Learn QGIS: Your step-by-step guide to the fundamental of QGIS 3.4, 4th Edition

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Commissioning Editor: Richa Tripathi
Acquisition Editor: Prachi Bisht
Content Development Editor: Anugraha Arunagiri
Technical Editor: Aniket Iswalkar
Copy Editor: Safis Editing
Project Coordinator: Ulhas Kambali
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Indexer: David Punnoose Muthukaden
Graphics: Tania Dutta
Production Coordinator: Shraddha Falebhai

First published: September 2013
Second Edition: December 2014
Third Edition: March 2016
Fourth Edition: November 2018

Production reference: 1221118

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
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ISBN 978-1-78899-742-3

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Contributors

About the authors

Andrew Cutts is a Geospatial freelancer based in West Sussex, UK. He has almost 20 years industry experience across several sectors. He holds a degree in geography and a masters, in GIS (awarded in 2002). Andrew consults for clients worldwide and gives training in Geospatial technology. The themes covered include Python, GIS, and Earth Observation. Andrew writes extensively on the topic of Geospatial technology on his blog ( www.acgeospatial.co.uk ) and is the co-host of the #scenefromabove podcast. You can follow him on Twitter at @map_andrew.

Anita Graser is a spatial data scientist, open source GIS advocate, and author, with a background in geographic information science. She is currently working with the Center for Mobility Systems at the Austrian Institute of Technology in Vienna and teaching QGIS classes at UNIGIS Salzburg. She serves on the QGIS project steering committee and has published several books about QGIS. She also develops tools, including the Time Manager plugin for QGIS. You can follow her on Twitter at @underdarkGIS .

What this book covers

, Where Do I Start?, covers the installation of QGIS 3.4, major changes since QGIS 2.x, UI, and getting help.

, Data Creation and Editing, covers data formats, loading data, interacting with it, and vector and raster data.

, Visualizing Data, explains how to interactively style vector and raster GIS data.

, Creating Great Maps, covers the labeling of data, creating maps, and map outputs.

, Spatial Analysis, explains the P rocessing Toolbox , spatial analysis of vector and raster data, batch processing, and modeling.

, Extending QGIS with Python, covers actions, the Python console, plugins, and 3D applications.

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Preface

QGIS is a user-friendly, open source Geographic Information System (GIS) that runs on Linux, Unix, macOS, and Windows. The popularity of open source GIS, and QGIS in particular, has been growing rapidly over the last few years.

This book will take you, as a new user, on a journey from the first time you fire up QGIS, all the way through to being on the cusp of developing your own processing pathway. We will travel together through familiarization with the user interface, loading some data, editing it, and then creating data. QGIS often surprises new users with its mapping capabilities. We will unlock these doors by looking at styling and creating your first map. And that is not all! Learning about spatial analysis and the powerful tools in QGIS will form the final part of this introductory book, before we end our journey by looking at the Python processing options.

Who this book is for

This book is for users, developers, and consultants who know the basic functions and processes of GIS and want to learn how to use QGIS to analyze geospatial data and create rich mapping applications.

To get the most out of this book

We will cover installation in , Where Do I Start. This book steps through the basic tasks of QGIS 3.4 through to the advanced topics, such as Python programming. To get the most from this book, it is recommended to follow the chapters in sequence.