Open Source GIS: QGIS

There are plenty of options if you need to work with a GIS, that don't imply acquiring a very expensive license or subscribing to an online service. Even more importantly, many of them come from a joint community effort (sometimes sponsored by companies or public institutions), and they work following the Open Source principles, which "grant users the rights to study, change, and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose"

Among these options, QGIS is hands down the most popular choice, as a standalone system or along with other products for different, specific purposes: PostgreSQL/PostGIS, Openlayers, OpenStreetMap, Geoserver, and many, many more.

Some of the projects mentioned above are part of OSGeo, The Open Source Geospatial Foundation, that works towards driving global adoption of open geospatial technology.

QGIS is also an excellent tool for learning GIS, from the very basics to almost any kind of professional project. There is plenty of high quality learning material available on the web, created and maintained up to date by the QGIS community or third parties. For our course, we will use the Official Training manual.

So, first thing is installing QGIS on your computer. There are installers for Windows, Mac and Linux available at the official Download page. You will see that there are two different versions available:

• 3.18 'Zürich' is the latest version.
• 3.16.4 'Hannover' is the Long Term Release (LTR) version. This version is more stable and has an extended support period. The materials we're following are based on this version.

Exercises

Once installed, these are the recommended exercises:

• Read this introduction to GIS
• Dig a bit deeper into different geospatial data types: Vector and Raster
• Learn about different Coordinate Reference Systems, and try to make a rectangle with an orange's peels ;)
• Create your first map, following this exercise. You can also try and load a different dataset from Natural Earth Data.
• Learn the basics about symbology.
• Start working with raster data here.

The sample data used in the exercises is available here.

As explained here, exercises are tagged as "Basic", "Intermediate" or "Advanced" based on its difficulty or level of expertise required. I'd recommend completing at least the "Basic" level exercises, but of course, feel free to try with a higher level if you feel comfortable with it.