Conefor (previously known as Conefor Sensinode) is a tool to quantify the importance of habitat areas and links for the maintenance of connectivity. It is also used to evaluate the impacts on connectivity of habitat and landscape changes. Conefor is used to conduct a spatial ecology analysis and conservation planning. The Conefor for Processing plugin contains tools to prepare data and perform all types of analysis available in the Conefor.
The new plugin is a great addition to the Circuitscape provider I have developed before. Together, these plugins create a powerful set of tools for spatial ecology and conservation, allowing researchers from different fields to predict the movements of animals, evaluate the impact of climate change on range shifts, analyse the spread of invasive species or disease, understand how landscape patterns affect gene flow, and much more.
To be effective on the battlefield, make informed and timely decisions, the army needs to analyse tons of data. While all information comes from various sources and in different forms, it ends up being laid out on a map. There are many ways to represent it, and one of them is by using special symbols like the ones described by NATO APP-6D and DOD MIL-STD-2525D standards.
I haven’t posted anything for ages. Partially because of preoccupation and partially because I kind of lost motivation. Quite a lot has happened since my last post, and all of these things have affected both my life and my desire/ability to write something in one or another way. Disturbances at work, pandemics, changes in personal life and, finally, last year, war came to the doorstep of my home, ruining everything.
A few weeks ago, I tried to gather myself and finally get my hands dirty in an attempt to make this site look the way I wanted it. Refreshing HTML/CSS skills took some time, so did digging through the Hugo documentation, as well as trials and errors. It turned out that Hugo is indeed a great tool: powerful, flexible and at the same time relatively easy to deal with. There is a learning curve, but it is not as steep as it looks at first sight. It was fun, and I do not regret a single second spent on it.
And here we go. While not perfect and probably not optimal here and there, the site is good enough, and I’m quite happy with the result. Still need to migrate old posts, though, and maybe make the whole site multilingual.
Let’s hope that now I will return to more or less regular writing.
As it is said, the subject says it all. I replaced nginx with caddy and instead of WordPress took HUGO. Both are more than enough for my needs. Moreover, it is a bit more convenient now.
All that is left is to tweak the theme or maybe even create my own.
As QGIS 3.0 has entered the “hard freeze” phase, it is time to update the plugins. I decided to start with Processing providers, as they are the most relevant. As of today, all of them are updated and available for installation from my plugin repository:
Circuitscape for Processing — analysis of heterogeneous landscapes (for example, to model movement, gene flow of plants and animals, or to identify areas important for connectivity conservation)
WhiteboxTools provides a set of spatial analysis tools, primarily for raster data. It was developed as a response to numerous requests coming from users of the specialized GIS called Whitebox GAT. People wanted to use Whitebox GAT functionality in automated data processing workflows. At the time of this post, WhiteboxTools already contains more than 250 tools from Whitebox GAT and about the same number will be added in the near future. The WhiteboxTools for Processing plugin I have developed integrates these tools into QGIS.
The plugin is already available from my plugin repository. Only QGIS 3.0 is supported. Currently, the plugin has an experimental status, so do not forget to enable experimental plugins in the QGIS Plugin Manager settings. In addition to the plugin, you should also download and install WhiteboxTools and specify their location in the Processing settings.
As the year is reaching its end, it is time to look back and remember what happened and how it affected my life.
Firstly, this year will be remembered for changes in professional life. After working on relatively small projects, I moved to work for a large company. I have never had to complain about a lack of interesting and challenging tasks, but now I’m working on the cutting-edge of geospatial technology and directly involved in the development of solutions that make GIS easier to use and accessible, simplify field data collection and processing huge amounts of data, and allow building a geospatial infrastructure either purely with open source components or by using a mix of proprietary and open source solutions.
I continue working on open-source projects, primarily QGIS. I actively contribute to Processing, update my own plugins, and continue with localisation and translation of documentation. Also, I have fixed a few bugs in GeoGig that prevented its usage with cyrillic and other character sets other than Latin1. Unfortunately, I did not have enough time and inspiration to complete another book, lets hope next year will be more productive in this regard.
The year was also packed with conferences and developer meetings. Ukrainian and international, small and big. Kharkiv, Girona, Bonn… Although sometimes (for example, at FOSS4G) I was a bit scared, I anyway made presentations and/or ran workshops.
I was also in Lviv for the first time. The one-week vacation flew by like a flash. Lots of interesting architectural sights, museums, the Giselle ballet, delicious coffee, and cozy evenings. I will definitely have to go there again.
I want to wish everyone and myself that the next year will be even more eventful, active, and diverse.
Next week I will be in Bonn (Germany) for FOSS4G 2016. This will be my first trip to a conference of that scale.
Together with Victor Olaya we will run a workshop on Processing. And as the QGIS project decided to hold another hackfest in parallel with the conference, I will also work on QGIS improvements and bugfixes.
The second (and first for me) QGIS User Conference is over. More than 150 participants, 9 workshops in three parallel sessions, 18 presentations from people all over the world: two incredibly busy days flew really fast.
Workshops from QGIS core developers and the most experienced community members were interesting and useful for both beginners and those who have been using QGIS for a long time. Personally, I managed to attend four workshops:
From data model to QGIS project — Matthias Kuhn and Andreas Neumann were showing how to prepare data and setup QGIS to comfortably use datasets containing lots of interdependent tables with and without spatial information.
QGIS Cartography Tips and Tricks — Alexandre Neto demonstrated QGIS capabilities to create beautiful printed maps. The workshop was dedicated not only to the use of Print Composer and Atlas functionality but also highlighted powerful QGIS features for layer styling, labeling, using map themes, and multiple styles for a single layer.
Advanced Processing — actually, I attended this workshop not as an ordinary participant, but as a second mentor. Together with Victor Olaya we showed some “secret” features of Processing that could take analysis productivity to the next level.
Your first steps in Python with QGIS — led by Martin Dobias and targeted at beginners who want to automate their work by developing scripts and plugins. I attended this workshop to see how others talk about PyQGIS and maybe borrow some ideas for my own workshops.
18 presentations on a wide range of topics once again confirmed that QGIS turned from a “pet project” into a full-fledged competitor of such well-known products as ArcMap and MapInfo a long time ago. It was very interesting to listen to reports on the migration of government agencies to QGIS as well as on using QGIS in conservation and educational institutions. Presentations about new QGIS features, plugins, and other related developments, such as QGIS Server clients, were also captivating.
Many thanks to the organizers for their hospitality and impeccable organization of the conference.