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GRASS (Geographic Resources Analysis Support System)
GIS is considered by most to be the best open source GIS program to date. It is fully featured with the ability to do
complex analysis, which the other two programs discussed in this website have
not been able to accomplish. GRASS GIS
is able to run on Windows, Linux, and Mac OSX operating systems. The program is also being widely used by
educational institutions, governments and businesses around the world. The latest release of GRASS can perform the
following functions:
- Ability
to work with topological 2D/3D vectors
- Vector
network analysis
- Image
processing and visualization of 3D areas
- Large
extent of support for raster and vector formats
- Graphics
production functionality
The article summary below will help you to better
understand GRASS GIS from a user’s perspective in a real world situation.
Authors: Engineering
Technologies Canada Ltd.
Title: Open Source GIS for
Small Businesses in the
Website and Date of Article:
Engineering Technologies Canada Ltd. (May 2005)
Data Site Accessed: August 4,
2006
http://engtech.ca/archives/OpenSource_GIS_Review.pdf
This
article discussed three major open source GIS programs: GRASS GIS, Quantum GIS, and Mapserver Web GIS.
This summary will concern the authors’ review of GRASS GIS. The authors installed and ran GRASS GIS on
Ubuntu Linux for their review. The
authors noted that this latest release of GRASS included a very basic GUI,
which made it easier to work with, but sometimes got in the way of performing
command line operations that are the heart of GRASS GIS.
In
reference to GRASS GIS’s analysis tools, the authors noted it had very
sophisticated tools for analysis, but lacked some of the basic tools of
cartography, like being able to create basic maps and layouts. Quantum GIS was found to work well with GRASS
GIS as a front end program.
Dislikes
with the program by the authors included its ugly GUI and hard to find
documentation concerning the newest release.
Novice users were not recommended to try GRASS GIS as the authors felt
it had a steep learning curve, due to its command line roots and its complexity
of tools. Experienced GIS users would
probably consider GRASS to work well for many of their purposes.
If you would like to find out more about GRASS GIS,
feel free to click on the following link: http://grass.itc.it. The link is to the GRASS website, where you can
find tons of documentation and help concerning this program.
You can also click on the following link to see
screenshots of GRASS in action.
http://grass.itc.it/grass60/screenshots/index.php
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