[GRASSLIST:1767] Production GIS with Grass

GRASS GRASS user
1

Good afternoon,

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?

I am trying to identify any such cases and engage someone involved with
them in a brief conversation. Perhaps the entire list would like to
listen in?

Thanks in advance for any input.

Mitch Day

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
= Mitch Day =
= 612 625-9040 =
= mday@socsci.umn.edu =
= University of Minnesota =
= Department of Geography =
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

2

On Wed, 25 Apr 2001, Mitch Day wrote:

Good afternoon,

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?

I am a consultant, rather than an academic. I've been using GRASS 5 since
last July to support ground water studies; mostly in late phases of data
analysis through simulations to presentation. I am gradually shifting
more and more of my mapping needs over to GRASS. So far I haven't made
much use of GRASS as a data base for organizing raw data or in the early
steps of analysis. I expect to use GRASS (along with postgresql)
in early stages of some pending work. We also used our GRASS installation
to help review a large watershed study that was completed by Blacklands.

Is that what you have in mind as a "production" GIS?

I am trying to identify any such cases and engage someone involved with
them in a brief conversation. Perhaps the entire list would like to
listen in?

I understand that Blacklands (Temple, Tx) has been using a version of
GRASS 4 for quite some time.

Roger Miller
Lee Wilson and Associates

3

Here at Modena we are using GRASS in a research project that lead to a
commercial product
that would be used in production environment. That is a client/server
product, were the client
is a Windows machine and the server a Linux box with GRASS and PostgreSQL...
of course
only the client side is commercial software. We have used GRASS as an
engine, wrapping it
in a more comfortable user interface and enabling client/server interaction.
That's still not a
production environment but we're not far from it as we have eliminated the
two biggest
shortcomings of GRASS from the point of view of a Windows user: the user
interface and
the operating system, that's still percieved as unfriendly (well, in fact
Linux is still difficult
to set up and mantain for our average user).
Hope this helps
Andrea Aime

PS: BTW, I heard rumours that ENEL, our national electrical company, is
using GRASS
along with Autocad Map for their GIS needs... but I don't know anyone that
can confirm
this or give in deep information about it... In general I suspect that GRASS
and Linux are
used more often that one can expect, but often their users are not aware of
it (because
they are used on the server side...)

----- Original Message -----
From: Mitch Day <mday@atlas.socsci.umn.edu>
To: Grasslist <GRASSLIST@baylor.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2001 9:29 PM
Subject: [GRASSLIST:1767] Production GIS with Grass

Good afternoon,

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?

I am trying to identify any such cases and engage someone involved with
them in a brief conversation. Perhaps the entire list would like to
listen in?

Thanks in advance for any input.

Mitch Day

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
= Mitch Day =
= 612 625-9040 =
= mday@socsci.umn.edu =
= University of Minnesota =
= Department of Geography =
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

4

Mitch Day wrote:

Good afternoon,

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?

I am trying to identify any such cases and engage someone involved with
them in a brief conversation. Perhaps the entire list would like to
listen in?

Thanks in advance for any input.

Mitch Day

Mitch

First as a general remark, I think production use of GRASS is not
uncommon. In GIS, we are in the position that full functionality in
commercial systems comes at a very high price, and the desktop systems
that are within the reach of the many small businesses and individuals
that provide geospatial analysis services do not provide complete or
robust solutions for what we need. Thus - as GRASS provides many of the
services otherwise available only on high-end systems, it would explain
why there are so many locations that use GRASS, including many that use
it in production use. Maybe other professions have the same dilemma in
relation to the software they use, but I get the impression that (in CAD
for example) they have a much lower barrier to entry into competent
commercial systems. The price of fully competent software is much lower,
and they usually work within institutional settings where the resource
availability is easier, or as consultants the market placement allows
them to charge higher fees, and they have a higher turnover. GIS is also
used by many voluntary organisations, which is not quite perhaps what
you are thinking of as `production use', but it is closer to that than
to an academic or educational definition of usage. I suppose (though I
don't know for sure) that organisations like Greenpeace use GIS.

For myself, I use GRASS for production of terrain maps and analysis, and
generation of vector linework. The latter is quite important. The vector
facilities at present, in spite of many flaws and feature limitations,
produce reliable linework, that is many orders more trustworthy than the
coverages generated by manual digitising in desktop systems. For some
years I have worked with others in large scale vector map production (eg
digitising surveys of up to 30,000 polygons), and I have found that the
easiest life is found through digitising with GRASS. As a result of my
carping and insistence, my associates rose to the challenge of trying to
find ways of generating good, clean linework in ArcView for example
(anything rather than that use that horrible linux - that is also _so_
unrespectable as it doesn't have Microsoft's approval). I take my hat
off to them, as they have succeeded to an extent I wouldn't have thought
possible, but to me this is still an unnecessary pantomime, and I prefer
the simplicity of a system that does the job once and does it properly.
That is why I want to see the GRASS vector capabilities maintained and
enhanced (which I am involved in).

Regards

David

5

> 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

6

(Redirected by "Dan Putler" <putler@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
*********** BEGIN REDIRECTED MESSAGE ***********

> 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

*********** END REDIRECTED MESSAGE ***********

7

Hello.

"PS2 Linux", Linux Kit for Sony PS2 with HDD40GB which supports 100 Base-TX
interface device, USB keyboard/mouse and VGA adapter will be available in
June in Japan. The price is 25000 Jpanese Yen (about 200 US$).

Anyone try to port Grass into this?

8

Charles Beaudry wrote:

(Redirected by "Dan Putler" <putler@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

Easy thematic maping is of course one of the goals. I would not call it
priority because it should not be such problem after implementing real
priorities which are I think (related to thematic maping):
1. reliable links to database in vectors (almost done)
2. standard connection to external database. (some experimental code is
    written and I want to open discussion after g5.0 release)

Then thematic maping should be simple modification of few modules and
some gui for display and ps modules.

Radim

9

Radim wrote:

Easy thematic maping is of course one of the goals. I would not call it
priority because it should not be such problem after implementing real
priorities which are I think (related to thematic maping):
1. reliable links to database in vectors (almost done)
2. standard connection to external database. (some experimental code is
    written and I want to open discussion after g5.0 release)

Then thematic maping should be simple modification of few modules and
some gui for display and ps modules.

Radim

I agree with Radim that although thematic mapping is important, especially
for the "sales pitch", the Grass community should not be distracted from its
mission, that is to build a GIS toolset for study and experimentation. It
is is through this effort that new ideas will arise that will eventually
find their way into commercial systems. I have no problem with this even
admitting that there would savings to be made using an open source GIS
solution.

If and when Grass is adequate for our "production" needs we will consider
its implementation in our organization. Until then we will continue to use
it and accompany its development, even participating when appropriate.

Charles Beaudry
Rio de Janeiro

10

Good afternoon,

Does anyone use GRASS to perform some content management? By 'content
management', I mean something similar to what is called a 'data container'
in SmallWorld. An object has a data container, which maintains links to
documents, images, or other types of non-geographic files.

I'm just wondering if this capability exists.

Mitch

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
= Mitch Day =
= 612 625-9040 =
= mday@socsci.umn.edu =
= University of Minnesota =
= Department of Geography =
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=