geo

July 25, 2019

Offline hiking maps with QGIS 3 and Geopaparazzi

In this post, I will show how to export background maps (as a set of MBTiles files) from QGIS 3 and import them in Geopaparazzi on Android to serve as backup offline hiking maps when far from civilization and mobile coverage.

It can be useful in France, where interesting maps to have while hiking are the IGN ones like Carte Topographique IGN (Scan 25) or their standard map (Scan Express Standard). They are accessible freely through the Geoportail mobile app. Unfortunately, the app doesn’t support offline mode.

March 17, 2018

Freehand Raster Georeferencer plugin updated for QGIS 3

A few weeks ago, I updated my Freehand Raster Georeferencer plugin for the newly released QGIS 3. I also included a few fixes for some issues as well as new features such as uniform scaling, a new “Georeference with 2 Points” tool (contributed by a user) or taking into account an existing world file. Those changes were backported to the plugin version for QGIS 2 so there should not be any difference between the QGIS 2 and 3 versions. See the updated doc for information.

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July 22, 2016

"Freehand Raster Georefencer" plugin for QGIS

Some time ago, I released a plugin for QGIS called “Freehand Raster Georeferencer” that allows interactive raster georeferencing. It implements some tools (move, rotate, scale, stretch…) to manipulate a raster directly on the map, on top of the other layers. This is in contrast with the standard raster georeferencing tool of QGIS, which needs control points and then an export to be able to check the georeferencing.

November 19, 2014

Paris in 3D with QGIS and three.js

Some time ago, I saw this article about using the Qgis2threejs plugin to export a QGIS map as a 3D visualisation in the browser, thanks to three.js and WebGL. When I recently tried to follow the post to reproduce the results, I had some problem sourcing the data (related to Vienna, Austria) so instead I searched for data related to Paris to create a similar scene. Here is the result corresponding to the screenshot above and another one with aerial photos, both showing the Montmartre area of Paris.

February 1, 2014

Tokyo Ramen Map on the Android app store

I released a free app called Tokyo Ramen Map a few weeks ago on the Play Store. It is a simple map application showing all the ramen restaurants in central Tokyo, along with ratings. I built it for my needs so it is quite bare bones. The main point was to make it work offline since I don’t have a data connection outside my apartment.

October 3, 2013

Apple iBeacon

Recently, I have been researching techniques for indoor positioning, where GPS does not work. Although it is not widely deployed yet, one technology that looks quite interesting is called “iBeacon”, an Apple-designed (and currently unofficially documented) profile of Bluetooth Low Energy.

September 22, 2013

QGIS 2.0

Version 2.0 of QGIS (formerly known as Quantum GIS) has just been released! The codename for this version is Dufour.

September 8, 2013

The Value of Geo-Information for Disaster and Risk Management

My sister informed me of a report recently launched by UN agency UNOOSA/UN-SPIDER and titled: The Value of Geo-Information for Disaster and Risk Management – Benefit Analysis and Stakeholder Assessment. Its primary goal is to give evidence of the economic, operational and strategic benefit which can be realized by applying geoinformation to disaster management but also to raise awareness and to help set priorities in research and development. It is a follow-up to the 2010 report titled Geoinformation for Disaster and Risk Management – Examples and Best Practices, a compilation of case studies that provides information on what can be done with geoinformation in support of disaster and risk management.

March 15, 2013

GAMA (GIS & Agent-based Modelling Architecture)

The “GIS and Agent-Based Modeling” blog reports on GAMA, an open source GIS-ABM tool that looks quite interesting:

GAMA is a simulation platform, which aims at providing field experts, modelers, and computer scientists with a complete modeling and simulation development environment for building spatially explicit agent-based simulations. It is being developed by several French and Vietnamese research teams under the umbrella of the IRD/UPMC International Research Unit UMMISCO since 2007.

November 20, 2012

HAZUS-MASAS

HAZUS-MASAS is not a magic incantation used by GIS wizards, just the name of an interesting project I was involved with (on the data engineering side of things) when I worked at Galdos Systems, back in Vancouver. I just saw CEO Ron Lake has written an article about it on the company’s blog. In short, the goal of the project was to enable the distribution of HAZUS files (created with a FEMA-provided ArcGIS plugin for the estimation of potential losses from natural disasters, like earthquakes or floods) through the Canadian Multi-Agency Situational Awareness System (MASAS), used by emergency managers. Some of the UI was done with the ArcGIS Viewer for Flex (screenshot above): In the backend, it connected with INdicio (a CSW-ebRIM implementation), which provided metadata about indicators extracted from HAZUS files, as well as the contents of the indicators themselves, stored as KML documents.