[Qgis-developer] GSoC proposal: QGis VisTrails plugin

[Marco Bernasocchi]

Hi I'll propose for QGis VisTrails plugin, here the text i'll be submitting
as idea, do you have any feedbacks?


Idea:
In scientific work-flow environments, Earth Observation/ Geospatial
data, services and
processes should be integrable together so that non-GIS users can
utilise spatial data in their
analyses (e.g. running statistical analysis, machine learning and
numerical modelling
processes).
VisTrails is an open-source scientific work-flow and provenance
management system
developed at the University of Utah that provides support for data
exploration and
visualization. Whereas work-flows have been traditionally used to
automate repetitive tasks,
for applications that are exploratory in nature, such as simulations,
data analysis and
visualization, very little is repeated---change is the norm. As an
engineer or scientist generates
and evaluates hypotheses about data under study, a series of different,
albeit related, work-
flows are created while a work-flow is adjusted in an interactive
process. VisTrails was
designed to manage these rapidly-evolving work-flows [vistrails.org]
Many work-flows can include spatial data and would take a grate
advantage of an integration
between the QGIS in VisTrails. Furthermore, due to the use of PyQt in
both projects, the fit
should be natural.
The aim is to produce a tool that will allow the following work-flow:
- Allow a user to to fetch all the data layers s/he is interested in
into Qgis.
- Use the plug-in API to launch VisTrails as a plug-in
- Give VisTrails access through Qgis API to all the currently loaded
data layers in a data
module.
- Use other VisTrails modules to construct a work-flow
- Have a VisTrails modules that places new generated or manipulated
layers back into Qgis
This approach would allow on one hand, Qgis users to have a model
builder like environment
where input data can be transformed through complex work-flows into new
information. On
the other hand this would allow seasoned VisTrails users to trigger the
power of Qgis into their
work-flows
As a future work, this tool could be adapted as a VisTrails module so
that it can directly be
used from within VisTrails to trigger the Qgis spatial analysis power.

ciao Marco
-- 
Marco Bernasocchi
www.bernawebdesign.ch
skype: mbernasocchi