CSD101 Data Science

Introduction to Geographical Information System

What is GIS?
A GIS (Geographic Information System) is a computer based
system that provides functions and tools to store, edit,
manipulate, query, analyze, visualize and present geographic
data.
Represents Spatial Information.
GIS is a part of the discipline “Geoinformatics” or “Geomatics”.
What is GIS?
Other parts of Geomatics are :
GPS Capture location of an object on the Earth’s surface

Remote Sensing Science of collecting information on the surface of the earth

without being in contact with it (eg Satellite, Drones, etc)
Photogrammetry Science of making measurements from the photographs for
recovering exact positions of points on a surface
Geography Field of science devoted to the study of the lands, the features, the
inhabitants and the phenomena of the earth
Cartography Science of Map making
GIS Applications
Preparing Maps
Urban Planning
Agriculture
Disaster Management
Determining Land use and Land cover change
Navigation
Surveying
Asset Management
Traffic Density
Deforestation
Wildlife Management
Example of GIS Application
Event: Disaster at Kedarnath in June 2013
What happened: Heavy rains and flooding
Where happened: mainly along river course
Who got affected: Pilgrims (Tourists), local residents, animals, crops, buildings, roads,
bridges
Why it happened: Heavy water flow, Erosion of soil, Weak foundation of buildings- bridges-
roads
How to estimate damage
How to re-build and re-habilitate so that damage can be minimized if such disaster
happens in future
A Geographic Information System containing data on soil, elevation, flood plains, roads,
rivers, buildings, crops, pilgrim sites, number of pilgrims, hotels etc. needs to be
developed to estimate damage and work out new re-habilitation strategy
Components of GIS
GIS consists of following components:
 Hardware: Computer, Scanner, Printer, etc.
 Software: DBMS system, Tools to perform operations on data, Networking
software
 Network: Intranet, Internet
 Data: Geographic data of proper time-frame
 Experts: Understand the relationships between data elements, their importance
and develop models for describing various processes (soil-erosion, water flow
analysis, etc.)
 Procedures: Spatial and attribute data analysis techniques, Models pertaining
various processes
 Users: Run the models developed by the experts or use spatial and attribute
data analysis techniques to derive meaningful information from the data. The
information is presented in the form of Maps, Charts, Tables or Reports
Components of GIS
 An aerial photograph
Tompkins County, NY, USA Date:5/7/92
Ground water prospects map of Gujarat state
Map data with components
Effect of Tsunami-2004
Geographic Data (Vector and Raster)
The data belonging to the objects on the surface of the Earth are called
geographic data if they are described in terms of (X, Y) co-ordinates.
Because of the co-ordinates
Geographic data can be displayed on the screen
Distance, Length, Area, Perimeter, etc. can be computed
There are two types of data : VECTOR and RASTER
Vector and Raster Data of the same region
Vector Data
Vector data consists of individual points which are stored as pairs of
(x,y) coordinates and represented as a series of (X, Y) coordinate pairs in
the computer. It is used to represent :
Points (e.g. Towers, Hospitals) : Points are not connected.
Lines (e.g. Rivers, Roads) : Points of same lines are connected to
previous and next points. Lines may be connected to other lines at
nodes.
Polygons (e.g. Districts, Lakes) : Boundary points are connected
to previous and next points and first and last points are also
connected.
Vector Data
* * *
* * *
* * * *
* *

* * * *
* *
*
* * *

Points : Have location, but Lines : Have location and Polygons : Have location,
no length, area or perimeter length but no area or perimeter and area but no
perimeter length Connectedness
Examples of Vector Data
Maps prepared by mapping agencies like SOI, FSI, All India Soil and Land
use Survey
Cadastral maps of land parcel boundaries prepared by local agencies
Shapefiles downloaded from public domain databases
Data captured by GPS receivers
Vector Data Formats
ESRI (Environmental Systems Research Institute) Shapefile - .shp, .dbf, .shx, .prj
Geographic JavaScript Object Notation - .geojson, .json
Geography Markup Language - .gml
Google Keyhole Markup Language - .kml, .kmz

Note : The most common geospatial file is the shapefile (.shp) which is widely
accepted and has become the industry standard. Three files- .shp, .shx and .dbf are
required to make a shapefile.
Raster Data
Raster - Raster data represents surfaces. It is cell-based data which consists of a matrix
of cells (or pixels) organized into columns and rows (or grid) where each cell represent
information. Raster data is used to show elevation, temperature, etc.
Raster data are stored as a grid of values.
Raster data are often images taken by satellites.
The entire Area Of Interest (AOI) is divided in to equal size cells (or pixels) vertically and
horizontally and each cell is assigned a data or no-data value.
The vertical divisions are called columns and the horizontal divisions are called rows.
Total cells in an image = nrows * ncolumns
Area on the ground represented by one cell on the image is called spatial resolution of
the image. It is measured in meters.
Higher spatial resolution represents objects with more details and lower spatial
resolution represents objects with less details.
Examples of Raster Data
Satellite Data : It covers larger area [sources : LANDSAT (Land Satellite),
SPOT (short form of French- "Satellite Pour l'Observation de la Terre"
meaning "Satellite for observation of Earth"), IRS (Indian Remote Sensing)]
Aerial images: cover smaller areas
Scanned maps
Photographs taken by digital camera
Raster Data Formats
Raster data formats :
Single and Multiband satellite data
 BIL (band-interleaved-by-line)
 BIP (Band Interleaved by Pixel)
 BSQ (Band Sequential):
TIF/TIFF (Tagged Image File Format)
GeoTIFF (Geo-referenced TIFF image)
JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group)
HDF (Hierarchical Data Format)
IMG (Image)
Geographic coordinate system
Geographic coordinate system is a location reference system for
geographic features on the earth’s surface.
Defined by longitudes (X) and latitudes (Y)
Longitudes (X) correspond to East or West directions
Latitudes (Y) correspond to North or South directions
Range of Longitudes: 0° E to 180° E and 0° W to 180° W
Range of Latitudes: 0° N to 90° N and 0° S to 90° S
One degree has 4 minutes
One second = approximately 30 meters on the ground
One degree = 108 km on the ground
Position of a point ( Ex., Long 50° E, Lat 40° N) in
coordinate system
NORTH

WEST EAST

SOUTH
Projection
It is used to represent the 3D surface of the earth or other round body on a
2D plane in cartography.
Using projection, the coordinate system and data is represented on a flat
surface such as on paper or a digital screen.
Transformation from earth’s curved surface to the flat surface causes
distortions of geographic features in direction, angle, scale, area, shape
etc.
Various map projections are available. Some preserve shape, some
preserve distance, some preserve area and some preserve direction. You
may select the projection method as per your priority.
Thus, none of the maps are 100% accurate.
Surfaces used for Map Projection
Cone Cylinder Plane

More suitable for mapping It only distorts size of areas, Often used to map polar
continental and regional particularly of the North and regions as it is more
areas South Poles. accurate at point of
contact
Types of Map Projections : Conical
Types of Map Projections : Cylindrical
Types of Map Projections : Planar
Commonly used Projection Types
Conical
Lambert Conformal Conic(LCC)
Polyconic
Cylindrical
Transverse Mercator (TM)
Universal Transverse Mercator(UTM)
Space Oblique Mercator (SOM)
Planar (azimuthal or a zenithal)
Stereographic
Map projection always introduce error and distortion
Geo-referencing
Geo-referencing is the process of defining exactly where on the Earth’s
surface an image or raster dataset was created.
This positional information is stored with the digital version of the aerial
photo.
When the GIS application opens the photo, it uses the positional information
to ensure that the photo appears on the correct place on the map.
Using positional information such as coordinate for the top left pixel in the
image, the size of each pixel in the X direction and Y direction, etc. the GIS
application can ensure that raster data are displayed in the correct place.
The geo-referencing information for a raster is often provided in a small
text file accompanying the raster.
Example of geo-referenced map is : http://geo.nls.uk/urbhist/74400073-
4/googlemaps.html
Working with Quantum GIS (QGIS)
QGIS is an open access software used to create GIS applications.
QGIS or any other GIS software is used to
Open digital maps on computer
Add new spatial information on a map
Create customized maps
Perform spatial analysis.
GIS application contains Attribute table for each layer that displays information
on features. In Attribute table,
Each row represents a feature (with or without geometry),
Each column contains a particular piece of information about the feature.
Features can be searched, selected, moved or even edited.
Creating Vector Point Data on Map
Install QGIS (Quantum GIS).
After successful installation, open QGIS Desktop.
Follow the given steps to create Vector Point Data.
1. Click on “project” menu optionselect new.
2. Click on “layer” menu optionselect “add vector layer”.
3. Select “file” in source type and select “Gujarat_locations.shp” shape file by clicking
on “browse” button. (Note: Download vector point data of Gujarat from the
“vector point data” folder given on LMS)
Creating Vector Point Data on Map
Creating Vector Point Data on Map
4. Click “open”. The point vector layer will be displayed as follows.
Creating Vector Point Data on Map
5. In layers panel, right click on “Gujarat_locations” vector layer and select “open attribute
table” to view details of all the locations.
Creating Vector Point Data on Map
6. The following Attribute table will be displayed showing details of different locations
marked as a point on Gujarat’s map.
Creating Vector Point Data on Map
To add new feature (record) in attribute table, click on “toggle editing”
button, click “add feature”click on the map area where you want to add
new “point” dataInsert values in the form which is displayedclick
okclick ”save layer edits” buttonclick “toggle editing” to stop editing
mode.
Creating Vector Point Data on Map
Toggle
editing
Save layer
edits
Add
Feature
Creating Vector Point Data on Map
To display labels with the points on map, double click on layer nameselect
“labels” from left paneselect “show labels for this layer” from drop down
list boxselect name of the field which you want to display as a
labelselect appropriate formattingclick ok.
Creating Vector Point Data on Map
Creating Vector Point Data on Map
To display selected point, you can apply filter by right clicking on layer nameselect
filterapply appropriate filter
Creating Vector Point Data on Map
Similarlly, you may add Raster image of any region and add vector point data layer on it.
To add raster image click on “layer” menu select “add layer”select “add raster
layer”select the image file “Gujarat_raster.tif”
Creating Vector Point Data on Map
Now, to create vector point data on this image do the following.
1. Layercreate layernew shapefile layer
2. Select “point” from “type”create attribute table by providing field names and
data typesclick oksave the file as shape(.shp) file named
“city_vector_point_on_Gujarat_map”.
Creating Vector Point Data on Map
3.Now, to create vector point data click on “toggle editing” button.
4.Then, click on “add feature”click on the map where you want to add the vector point
dataenter values of the attributes in the form that will be openedclick okThe
point will be displayed on the map.
5.Repeat Step-4 to add more features (vector data points) on your map.
6.After all the points are added, click again on “toggle editing” button to stop the editing.
7.Save the project.
Creating Vector Point Data on Map
Creating Vector Point Data on Map
To display labels on point data, double click on vector layer in layer’s paneclick on
labelsselect “show labels for this layer”select field name and do other formattingclick
okThe labels will be displayed for each point. Save the project by clicking “project”
menu”save as” optiongive project name.
Activity
Copy Vector Point Data folder from LMS.
Create a new project in QGIS. Add vector point data layer using the file places.shp from
the folder “places” of “india” folder of “vector point data” folder.
Add at least five new features (data points) for “Maninagar”, “Vatva”, “Barejadi”,
“Sabarmati” and “Mehamdabad” in this layer with all the values of attributes. (Note: All
these places are near to Ahmedabad)
Creating Vector Line Data on Map
Follow the given steps to create Vector Line Data on any map.
1. Click on “project” menu optionselect new or if you have existing project, click
projectselect openselect project name.
2. Click on “layer” menu optionselect “add vector layer”.
3. Select “file” in source type and select “Gujarat_highways.shp” shape file by
clicking on “browse” button. (Note: Download vector line data of Gujarat from the
“vector line data” folder given on LMS)
4. Click open. The line vector layer will be displayed as follows.
Creating Vector Line Data on Map
Creating Vector Line Data on Map
Follow the given steps to create new lines on the “Gujarat_highways”. (Note that
Gujarat_highway is a vector line file, so we can directly add new highway in the same
layer)
1. Click on “toggle editing” buttonclick “add feature”.
2. Now, start digitizing the points to create a line by pressing left mouse button.
When you are done with digitization of last point of line, press right mouse button.
Creating Vector Line Data on Map
Add
Feature

Toggle
Editing

Add Line by clicking

left mouse button to
put points and click
right mouse button
to end the process.
This is called
Digitization.
Creating Vector Line Data on Map
4. On pressing right mouse button, the form to enter attribute values will be opened.
Enter values for the new highway which you have created.
5. Repeat this process to add more lines.
6. Click “toggle editing” when you are done.
7. Save the project.
Creating Vector Line Data on Map

Fill up
attribute
values in
the form.
Creating Vector Line Data on Map

Line added, but still View of layer after

editing mode on. Editing mode off
Creating Vector Line Data on Map
Right click on layer nameclick “open attribute” table to view recently added line’s
attribute values.
Creating Vector Line Data on Map

New record inserted at the

end of the attribute table.
Creating Vector Line Data on Map
You may set formatting of lines and add labels by double clicking on layer name
and setting values in it.
Creating Vector Line Data on Map
Label can also be displayed on the lines by applying specific condition. For ex.,
Double click on layer. “layer properties” dialog box will be opened.
Select “labels” optionselect “rule-based labeling” from drop down list box.
Creating Vector Line Data on Map
Creating Vector Line Data on Map
Click on plus (+) sign displayed on the bottom left corner. Insert rule according to
which you want to display label.
Creating Vector Line Data on Map
Click ok. The labels will be displayed as per the defined rule.
Activity
Gujarat shares its border with Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. Add raster layer of
Gujarat and Mark these borders by adding Vector line layer on this. In attribute table of this layer
add the following fields.
state_name, neighbour_state, direction
When you mark the border, insert values in the attribute table. For ex., if you have marked
northeast common border of Gujarat and Rajasthan, enter the values Gujarat, Rajasthan and
NorthEast in the fields “state_name”, “neighbor_state” and “direction” respectively. Repeat the
same for other borders.

After plotting all the borders – (1) Display all the borders in different colors and style and (2) Label
each border with the name of two states sharing it. For ex., on border of Rajasthan and Gujarat,
display the label “Rajasthan and Gujarat”.
Creating Vector Ploygon Data on Map
Follow the given steps to create Vector Polygon Data on any map.
1. Click on “project” menu optionselect new or if you have existing project, click
projectselect openselect project name.
2. Click on “layer” menu optionselect “add vector layer”.
3. Select “file” in source type and select “Gujarat_natural.shp” shape file by clicking
on “browse” button. (Note: Download vector polygon data of Gujarat from the
“vector polygon data” folder given on LMS)
4. Click open. The polygon vector layer will be displayed as follows.
Creating Vector Polygon Data on Map
Creating Vector Polygon Data on Map
Follow the given steps to create new polygons on the “Gujarat_natural”. (Note that
Gujarat_natural is a vector polygon file, so we can directly add new areas in the same layer)
1. Click on “toggle editing” buttonclick on either “add feature” or “add circular ring”.
2. Now, start digitizing the points to create a polygon by pressing left mouse button. If
you are using “add feature”, it will automatically create closed area, so there starting
and ending points are not required to be same. But if you are digitizing polygon using
“add circular ring” option, starting and ending points must be same to create closed
area. When you are done with digitization of last point of polygon, press right mouse
button.
Creating Vector Polygon Data on Map (using “Add Feature”)

Add
Feature

Toggle
Digitization of polygon
Editing using “add feature”
Creating Vector Polygon Data on Map (using “create circular ring”)

Create circular
ring

Toggle Digitizing polygon using “create

Editing circular ring”. Select starting
point as an ending point and
click right mouse button after
completion.
Creating Vector Polygon Data on Map
3. On pressing right mouse button, the form to enter attribute values will be opened. Enter
values for the new area which you have created.
4. Repeat this process to add more polygons.
Creating Vector Polygon Data on Map
Creating Vector Polygon Data on Map

5. Click “toggle editing” to end editing. New polygons

6. Save the project. after “toggle
editing” off
Deleting Vector Polygon Data from Map
You may set formatting of Polygons and add labels by double clicking on layer name and
setting values in it.
If you want to delete any feature (here it is a polygon) :-
1. Either click on “select the feature” iconclick on the feature(polygon) which you
want to delete OR right click on layer name select “open attribute table”select
whole recordclose attribute table. The selected feature will be highlighted in
different colour.
2. Now, click on “toggle editing” buttonclick on delete icon. The feature will be
deleted.
3. Click on “toggle editing” when you are done.
Deleting Vector Polygon Data from Map
Select features
Delete

Selected
polygon is
displayed in
different
colour
Deleting Vector Polygon Data from Map

Feature
(polygon)
deleted from
the map
Activity

Download raster file of India with its neighboring countries from Google Map or any other
tool or from the internet. (Optional : Do “Georeference” if it is not). Create new project. Add
raster file by clicking layeradd layeradd raster layer. Create new vector polygon layer
with the following fields by clicking layercreate layernew vector layer.
neighbour_country_name, Direction, Area

Now, mark all the neighboring countries of India on this vector polygon layer. Display names
of these countries using labels and display all in different colours.
Combined Activity of all the Concepts
Copy “Ahmedabad University Raster” file from LMS. Create new project, add new raster layer
for “Ahmedabad university raster”, Mark following locations on this image by creating vector
point, line and polygon data. Format all the places with labels.
1. Point Data : CEPT Building, A G High School, Ahmedabad University Office
2. Line Data : Gujarat University Road, Drive-in Road, Commerce College Road
3. Polygon Data : GICT Building, AMSoM UG Building, School of Computer
Studies, H L Sports Ground

Note : Attribute table of all the three vector layers will have two
fields “location_name”, “type”
Thank you