DEPARTMENT OFNATURAL RESOURCES, ENVIRONMENT, THE ARTS AND SPORT

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Improving ESRI productivity with Freeware tools.NRETAS, Weed Management Branch

DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES, ENVIRONMENT, THE ARTS AND SPORTwww.nt.gov.au/nretas

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ArcGIS, the elephant in the room• Large skilled user base

• Comprehensive suite of functions

• Difficult licensing arrangements

• Price prohibitive for some users

A basic ArcGIS user license has some remarkable shortcomings

DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES, ENVIRONMENT, THE ARTS AND SPORTwww.nt.gov.au/nretas

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Today’s lesson…How to improve the basic ArcGISpackage

• Clip the inside of a polygon!

• Import KML

• Perform RASTER operations!

• Create random sampling points

• Make a mobile data collection tool!

….for FREE

DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES, ENVIRONMENT, THE ARTS AND SPORTwww.nt.gov.au/nretas

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How to #1 - Mapwindow• Full featured GIS

• Available at http://www.mapwindow.org/

• ‘Similar but different’ to ArcGIS

DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES, ENVIRONMENT, THE ARTS AND SPORTwww.nt.gov.au/nretas

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Mapwindow – Pro’s & Con’s

• Fast, easy work environment

• Many tools ‘smarter’ than ESRI’s

• Excellent shapefile tools

• Impressive hydrological tools

• Horribly dangerous shapefile editor

• Some releases ‘Crash happy’

DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES, ENVIRONMENT, THE ARTS AND SPORTwww.nt.gov.au/nretas

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Mapwindow – Demo

Clip Erase

Import KML

DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES, ENVIRONMENT, THE ARTS AND SPORTwww.nt.gov.au/nretas

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How to #2 – GME

• Successor of Hawth’s Tools

• Available at http://www.spatialecology.com/

• Totally different interface to ArcGIS

• Dependant on R stats

• Hence, impressive statistical tools

• Useful range of spatial processing tools

DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES, ENVIRONMENT, THE ARTS AND SPORTwww.nt.gov.au/nretas

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GME – Pro’s & Con’s

• Extremely well tailored for ecological users

• Useful for repetitive/similar tasks

• Transparent statistical processes

• Difficult/Impossible for ad hoc tasks

• Archaic command line interface

• Difficult to install for non ‘R’ users

DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES, ENVIRONMENT, THE ARTS AND SPORTwww.nt.gov.au/nretas

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GME – Demo Before

DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES, ENVIRONMENT, THE ARTS AND SPORTwww.nt.gov.au/nretas

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GME – Demo During

Clip Raster

Sample Points

DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES, ENVIRONMENT, THE ARTS AND SPORTwww.nt.gov.au/nretas

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GME – Demo After

DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES, ENVIRONMENT, THE ARTS AND SPORTwww.nt.gov.au/nretas

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How to #3 – Cybertracker

• Loosely equivalent to Arcpad

• Available at http://cybertracker.org/

• Development shell for PDA spatial apps

• Simple apps are quick and easy to make

• Flexible data structures

• Export to shapefile or any row/column format

DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES, ENVIRONMENT, THE ARTS AND SPORTwww.nt.gov.au/nretas

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Cybertracker – Pro’s & Con’s

• Easy for newbies to pick up

• Tailored to ecological data collection

• Many common sense features

• Plays nice with any GIS system

• No iPhone or Android version *yet*

• Different to conventional software development

• Needs a ‘tame geek’ to make it work

DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES, ENVIRONMENT, THE ARTS AND SPORTwww.nt.gov.au/nretas

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Cybertracker – Demo

Cybertracker

DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL RESOURCES, ENVIRONMENT, THE ARTS AND SPORTwww.nt.gov.au/nretas

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Finish….