[GRASSLIST:1786] Re: Production GIS with Grass

[Charles Beaudry]

(Redirected by "Dan Putler" <putler at commerce.ubc.ca>)
Hi All,

I found Charles Beuadry's assessments of great interest.  Thematic mapping for data visualization is one of the most powerful things about GIS, and is definitely something that would be an extremely welcome addition to GRASS (one that would greatly increase the size of the user base).  This naturally leads to the question of whether or not including thematic mapping is one of the priorities associated with changes in the vector module under GRASS5.1?

Dan Putler
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>
> > Are any members of this list aware of instances where Grass has been
> > implemented as a "production" GIS, rather than in an academic
> or research
> > setting?
> >
>

Dear GRASSLIST,

I have been experimenting with Grass since 1998 (I still have Markus
Neteler's Grass4.2.1 CDROM) and I have been following the evolution of the
program.  I work for a mining company doing mineral exploration for base
metals throughout Brazil where I have been stationed for the past 5 years.
We use GIS extensively but mostly as a data integration and presentation
tool and our main product is Mapinfo which, in spite of its legendary
weakness on the anylitical side (at least as a stand alone product) it
allows to us to produce very effective and eloquent data presentations
either as maps or as Powerpoint presentations.  I would say this product
(only available on MS platforms) has been one of the biggest impediments to
our adoption of Linux as a operating system.

>From the perspective of our needs, Grass has never been able to compete
because or weak thematic possibilities for point and vector data.  Not to
say the product has no use, in fact the grid-based functions are quite
powerful and the analytical tools are second to no other commercial
software.  Now with the interfaces with PostGresSQL and MySQL I think the
software is very versatile.  One of the things I like most is the varied way
you can work with the package, alternately with the TCLTKGrass interface,
the shell entered interactive or command driven interface (the later which
can be stored as an executable script), and clear documentation for the
access to the C library interface.  As a customizable tools it is hard to
imagine a better situation.  The NVIZ2.2 program now works very well with
many accelarated graphics hardware using version 4 of XFree86.

But notheless our production needs are mainly to store georeferenced point,
line, polygon, and grid data, all linked to a simple database structure and
in a common format that can be easily thematized and converted to
presentation quality maps and figures quickly and with ease.  The overhead
that is required by Grass is a bit heavy for use by our technical and
professional staff, especially in the field where the data is collected and
integrated for our on-going projects.

However I do see a possible niche as an engine to run our automatic target
generating algorithms, an exercise originally done on ArcInfo, and more
recently on Mapinfo (with the BIL files from version 6.0) with some in-house
software to run the targetting algorithms.  The Mapcalc module appears
versatile enough to carry out the calculations although I would need to
study this issue in more detail to confirm this.

Some of the recent initiatives being undertaken such as OpenEV
http://openev.sourceforge.net/
may help to address the issues raised by our specific needs in the mineral
industry.

All in all I have found the people involved with Grass to be patient and
friendly I am convinced that we will arrive at a point when the product will
be a viable alternative to the tools we are presently using.  Substantial
savings would be possible for a company that must upgrade nearly a hundred
copies of MapInfo (not to mention MSWin and MSOffice) each year to stay
current with bug-ridden software.

Charles Beaudry
Rio de Janeiro

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