[GRASS-user] Scientific Comparison between GRASS and Proprietary Remote Sensing/GIS Software

[Carlos "Guâno" Grohmann]

Hello Firman,

My colleague an I  just submitted a paper about a comparison between
GRASS and ArcGIS, using morphometric maps as a base. In general terms,
they both give similar results, except when there was an interpolation
with clustered data (points clustered along streamlines but with
clusters far from each other). In this case, GRASS produced a very
nice result, while ArcGIS made a really bad interpolation.

Other the one hand, I guess some things are easier to do in some
proprietary software, most of them have better map-producing
capabilities than GRASS and GRASS lacks some more interactive tools
(like interactive histogram stretching, color table manipulation for
vector maps etc).

On the other hand, you can do things in GRASS you couldn't even think
about in proprietary GIS. Consider how powerful r.mapcalc is, see the
beauty of a NVIZ session (all my ArcGIS friends are impressed with
NVIZ), or even how easy it is to adapt some piece of code to suit your
needs (I had to do that, I needed larger neighborhoods than
r.neighbors default maximum size - 25 - so I just changed in the code
and recompiled).

my two cents

Carlos





On 7/9/07, Firman Hadi <firman.hadi at crs.itb.ac.id> wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> One week ago I had a discussion with someone who is expert in remote
> sensing.
> It was a really nice discussion though we have a different perspective
> in using software.
> I prefer to use GRASS, because it's an open source software while he
> prefer to use
> proprietary software. He believed that GRASS can't do some tasks that
> proprietary softwares do.
> He thought that GRASS is not mature enough to be used. He asked me some
> prove that the results from GRASS is the same with proprietary software.
> For me, it will be better if I bring actual comparison between GRASS and
> proprietary software, though maybe it will take some time.
> Is there any link or arguments to give an accurate explanation for such
> kind of people?
> Thanks.
>
> --
> Firman Hadi,
> Center for Remote Sensing - ITB
> Labtek IXC, 3rd Floor
> Jl. Ganesha No. 10
> Bandung - INDONESIA
> http://crs.itb.ac.id
> Blog: http://jalmiburung.wordpress.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> grassuser mailing list
> grassuser at grass.itc.it
> http://grass.itc.it/mailman/listinfo/grassuser
>


-- 
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
              Carlos Henrique Grohmann - Guano
  Visiting Researcher at Kingston University London - UK
  Geologist M.Sc  - Doctorate Student at IGc-USP - Brazil
Linux User #89721  - carlos dot grohmann at gmail dot com
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
_________________
"Good morning, doctors. I have taken the liberty of removing Windows
95 from my hard drive."
--The winning entry in a "What were HAL's first words" contest judged
by 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY creator Arthur C. Clarke