Introduction to GIS and QGIS

A GIS can be used to emphasize the spatial relationships among the objects being mapped. While a computer-aided mapping system may represent a road simply as a line, a GIS may also recognize that road as the boundary between wetland and urban development between two census statistical areas. The soil based-GIS made the decision-making process more accurate, automated, and efficient. It is a dynamic product that serves to convert verbal communication into visual communication while preventing information overload. These software broadly fall under two categories- commercial and open source. In the present era, open-source software are gaining traction on the account of their customizability and community driven approach. The most commonly used open-source software in the domain of GIS is QGIS (earlier known as Quantum GIS). Its knowledge can greatly enhance the skills of the students that will greatly enhance the employability of students.

In the light of this discussion, Department of Civil Engineering, FEAT and Faculty of Agricultural Sciences (FASC), organized a collaborative hands-on-workshop for students of FEAT and FASC titled ‘Introduction to GIS and QGIS’ on 5^th September 2022 from 2:00 PM to 4:00 PM at Geospatial Research Laboratory, Ground floor, E-block. The session started with basic introduction of GIS and its historical applications. Then, they were familiarized with basic functionalities of QGIS software such the tabs, icons, setting the display units. Then the participants were enlightened with the advanced capabilities of QGIS such as vector and raster files and they were instructed about the procedure to add base maps form online repositories and download the topographical maps from the online repository of US Army Maps. At the end of the session, doubts of the participants were solved.

About the Speaker/Guest:

Dr. Aditya Kapoor is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Civil Engineering, FEAT. He received his Ph.D. degree from IIT Ropar. During his Ph.D. and bachelors, he extensively worked with GIS software such as QGIS and ArcGIS. Additionally, he underwent 1-month QGIS certificated training course organized by GIS Vision India Pvt. Ltd in June 2022.

This session covered the following topics:

• Introduction to GIS
• Historical applications of GIS
• Introduction and basic functionalities of QGIS such as tools and bars
• Raster and vector files, and how to download them from online repositories
• Advanced capabilities of QGIS such as geo-referencing

Learning Outcomes:

In this session, the students of FEAT and FASC were enlightened with the fundamentals of GIS and its historical usage, followed by demonstration of its basic features of QGIS such as tools and bars. Then the speaker enumerated the file types (Raster and Vector). Participants learned about the base-maps and procedure to add them, followed by downloading and geo-referencing of the raster file. They also learnt about the coordinate system and how to set the proper display units. Being industry standard software, such sessions enhance the employability of the students.