installing and using qgis - unescap.org · qgis is an open-source geographic information system...

Land Accounting Exercise – Part 1 – Installing QGIS

UNESCAP - Regional Expert Workshop on Land Accounting, Bangkok, Thailand, Sep. 2017

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Installing and using QGIS

Regional Expert Workshop on Land Accounting,

UNESCAP, 09-2017



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Introduction / Objective

QGIS is an open-source geographic information system (GIS) that allows for the editing, visualization,

analysis and modelling of spatial data. It is freely available and can be downloaded to run on a variety

of operating systems such as Windows, Mac OSX, Linux, etc. The series of tasks in this lab exercise will

guide participants in the installation of the QGIS software onto their computer and give a basic

introduction into its structure.

At the end of this task you will have

downloaded and installed the latest QGIS version on to your computer

familiarized yourself with, customized and saved the QGIS interface

navigated your way around QGIS

learned about and installed QGIS plugins

1) Create a folder on your C:/ drive on your computer called QGISlab by right clicking on the C:

drive and navigating down to the New / Folder.

2) Go to the QGIS download page and download the latest 64bit version of QGIS for windows

which is QGIS 2.18.12 'Las Palmas’ by clicking once. If you have a 32 bit machine or using another operating system search the bottom of the page for your operating system and

download the correct operating system version of QGIS.

http://www.qgis.org/en/site/forusers/download.html

Task 1 – Intro to QGIS

http://www.qgis.org/en/site/forusers/download.html



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3) You browser will download the file to the browsers default download directory. By pressing

the control key and the letter J at the same time a popup window will show you the folder

where the QGIS file has been downloaded. The QGIS file will be called:

QGIS-OSGeo4W-2.18.12-1-Setup-x86_64.exe

4) Move or copy the above file to your C:/QGISlab folder and

o double click on the file osgeo4w-setup-x86_64.exe. You will get a popup window with a

security warning.

o hit the run button to start the installation process and follow the prompts. There is no

need to install the data sets suggested by QGIS.

5) Once QGIS has completed installing

o click on the Windows Start icon at the bottom left of your screen and

o double click on the QGIS desktop icon to open QGIS.



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6) The QGIS desktop interface has panels and toolbars along with a main canvas area where

spatial data is displayed.

Canvas area – spatial

data displayed here

Browser panel

Displays folder structure

and location of data

Data layer panel

Displays spatial data sets being used

Load data panel

Loads spatial data by type

(vector, raster, etc.)

Toolbar

Icons correspond to a tool that

performs a spatial operation



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7) Take a few minutes and hover over the icons at the top of the QGIS window for a second or two to see

what the tool is named.

8) Customize your QGIS interface by adding the log message panel to show processes and messages

generated by QGIS

Click on the View tab at the top left

Scroll down to the Panels menu and ensure that the layout, browser and log messages

panels are highlighted



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9) One feature of QGIS that is extremely useful are plugins. Plugins are written by developers and users to

extend the functionality of QGIS. Plugins are written to provide specific geospatial processing

capabilities to QGIS.

o Click on the Plugins tab at top of the QGIS window

o Click on the Manage and Install Plugins to open up the online QGIS repository where the plugins

are located

o The plugins that are currently installed in your session will have an X beside them but there are a

few more we will use that will help in the construction of our land cover statistics

In the Search bar on the Plugins page search for the

o OpenLayers plugin and scroll down to it, it will become highlighted with a blue

background



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o Once highlighted click on the install plugin box at the bottom right corner to install

the plugin.

o The OpenLayers plugin allows a user to bring in Google Maps, Bing Maps,

OpenStreetMap layers and more into their workspace.

10) Repeat the plugin installation for the remaining plugins that you will use:

o Statist - Calculate and show statistics for a field

o GroupStats – Frequency statistics

o MOLUSC – land cover statistics

o Rasterstats – Compute raster statistics



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11) Now that all the plugins are activated, save the project to the C:\QGISlab folder as masterlayout.qgs

12) One more thing to do. Load in the Google map service into QGIS to familiarise yourself with the

pan/zoom in and out functions.

o Click on the Web tab at the top of the QGIS window

o Scroll down to the OpenLayers plugin tool

o Scroll down to the Google Maps tool

o Click on the Google Satellite tool

This should load the Google Satellite imagery used in Google Maps into QGIS as a background reference,

which will be used later on for verifying various land cover classification products to be used in the

remaining exercise.



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13) Finally get familiar with the QGIS interface by testing and exploring the software. The best way to learn

is hands on. The more you use it the more you will get comfortable with the software.

A good place to start is here:

http://docs.qgis.org/2.14/en/docs/training_manual/introduction/overview.html

14) Other resources for using QGIS

http://docs.qgis.org/2.14/en/docs/training_manual/introduction/index.html

https://mltconsecol.github.io/QGIS-Tutorial/QGIS-Tutorial/Treglia_QGIS_Tutorial_2_12.pdf

http://docs.qgis.org/2.14/en/docs/training_manual/introduction/overview.html

http://docs.qgis.org/2.14/en/docs/training_manual/introduction/index.html

https://mltconsecol.github.io/QGIS-Tutorial/QGIS-Tutorial/Treglia_QGIS_Tutorial_2_12.pdf

installing and using qgis - unescap.org · qgis is an open-source geographic information system...

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