GIS is generally considered with 5 major components:

• Peoples
• Data
• Methods
• Hardware
• Software

Data should be managed by or with Cultural Heritage (CH) domain experts. It will be discussed more in chapter 6. This section will only focus on the technical aspect: data formats, data models and so on. The other side of “data” (its quality, its bias and its fairness or absence of fairness) must be acknowledged but it should be done by domain experts who know when, why and how this data was made. It will be outside of the scope of this skills and tools inventory. Needless to say: a good critical mindset is always a plus when you are dealing with data.

People (users, data producers, data analysts, etc.) are a very important part but we assume that students and professionals in CH already have management skills, “soft skills” and a good understanding of their institutional environment.

This leaves us with methods, hardware and software. As obvious as it sounds GIS is an information system that means a lot of it happens inside a computer. The “cloud” makes it a bit less clear but we are still interacting with a computer behind the Web. We will not spend too much time on the “hardware” component as we feel our goal is not to teach the computer science (CS) behind GIS but we will still give some advice and list some skills related to it. The trade-off here is that we think that a small part of CS that we will use will make the students' life easier and help us avoid some pitfalls while being relatively easy to grasp.

Finally, methods and software are what this inventory will mostly cover.

Desktop tools

Open source Desktop softwares

Quantum GIS (QGIS)

MINERVA project partners made a collective choice to use open source and free of charges tools. This choice should allow a better adoption by a larger community of teachers and students.

As mentioned on the OSGEO website, “QGIS is the leading Free and Open Source Desktop GIS. It allows you to create, edit, visualise, analyse and publish geospatial information on Windows, Mac OS, Linux, BSD and Android (via the QField app). We also provide an OGC Web Server application, a web browser client and developer libraries. The QGIS project is under very active development by an enthusiastic and engaged developer community with good mechanisms for help via stack exchange, mailing lists and (optionally) through a global network of commercial support providers”.

QGIS is a powerful desktop GIS to create, edit, visualise, analyse and publish geospatial information. We have selected it because it provides a wide range of functionalities (including related ones mentioned in the skills inventory) whether in vector and raster modes. It also benefits from:

• Numerous plug-ins developed by the user community;
• Additional functionalities provided by links with other software (GRASS GIS, SAGA GIS, Orféo Toolbox or GDAL).

gvSIG

As mentioned on the OSGEO website, “gvSig Desktop is easy to work in a variety of formats, vector and raster files, databases and remote services. There are always available all kinds of tools to analyze and manage your geographic information. gvSIG Desktop is designed to be an easily extensible solution, allowing thus continually improving the software application and developing tailor made solutions.”

It could be a good alternative to QGIS in case of incapacity to use QGIS.

SAGA GIS

More than a QGIS or a gvSIG (under the name of Sextante), SAGA GIS (for System for Automated Geoscientific Analyses) is a powerful Geographic Information System (GIS) software which has been designed for an easy and effective implementation of spatial algorithms. SAGA GIS offers a comprehensive, growing set of geoscientific methods and provides an easily approachable user interface with many visualization options. SAGA runs under Windows and Linux operating systems.

GRASS GIS

Geographic Resources Analysis Support System, commonly referred to as GRASS GIS, is a  Free and Open Source Geographic Information System Cross-platform software and technology built for vector and raster geospatial data management, geoprocessing, spatial modelling and visualization. It contains over 500 modules to process and render geographic data which allows to manipulate a variety of raster, vector and 3D formats, and run simple to advanced spatial analysis and modelling.

Some commercial desktop softwares

ArcGIS Pro

ArcGIS Pro is a powerful single desktop GIS application developed by ESRI. It runs on Microsoft Windows. It supports data visualization, advanced analysis and data maintenance in 2D, 3D, and 4D. It supports data sharing across a suite of ArcGIS products such as ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Enterprise, and enables users to work across the ArcGIS system through Web GIS.

Mapinfo Pro

Mapinfo Pro is a complete, desktop mapping solution for the geographic information system. It is edited by Precisely and runs on Microsoft Windows. It allows analysts to visualize, analyze, edit, interpret, and output data — revealing relationships, patterns, and trends.

Terrset

TerrSet is an integrated geographic information system developed by Clark Labs at Clark University. It runs on Microsoft Windows. It is also an efficient remote sensing software. TerrSet provides numerous GIS analysis and Image Processing tools coupled with a constellation of vertical applications. It also incorporates different specialized modellers for monitoring and modelling the earth system for sustainable development.

Global Mapper

Global Mapper is a GIS software developed by Blue Marble Geographics and it runs on Microsoft Windows. It allows users to manage vector, raster, elevation data and it provides viewing, conversion, and numerous general GIS features. It gives  access to a wide variety of data formats.

Some examples of online tools

Many online tools could be useful in the MINERVA project framework. We present below a non-comprehensive list.

Magrit

Magrit is a thematic cartography software which offers conventional cartographic methods coupled with innovative techniques (proportional symbols, choropleth map, discontinuity map, smoothed map, gridded map, cartogram, etc.). The application accepts many input formats and allows to export the final map in several formats as well as to save it in a "project-file". Produced maps are customizable thanks to a large choice of projections, color palettes, fonts and more...!

Magrit is developed and maintained by members of UMS RIATE. Code is instrumented for localization and 3 languages are currently available. A full description of each method is available in the user manual. A full description of each method is available in the user manual (in french).

Mapshaper

Mapshaper is an editor for map data. It is a Command line tool using node.js (javascript). It was developed by Matthew Bloch (famous NYT journalist) and Mark Harrower (University of Wisconsin – Madison, USA). Mapshaper allows editing Shapefile, GeoJSON, TopoJSON, CSV and several other data formats, written in JavaScript. It supports  common GIS tasks like simplifying shapes, editing attribute data, clipping, erasing, dissolving, filtering and more. For smaller files (up to 1GB) the web interface is fine but for bigger files and some specific tasks (simplify on lots of polygons) it will be better to go with a desktop install.

Rollapp

Rollapp is a web service that allows to virtualize different applications, including QGIS, and access them directly through a browser. It’s free of charge for read-only access with limited computing resources. For full access with extended computing resources for optimal performance, you need to subscribe to a Premium account.

Geosetter

GeoSetter is a freeware tool for Windows (requires Internet Explorer 10 or higher) for showing and changing geo data and other metadata (IPTC/XMP/Exif) of image files (e.g. images taken by digital cameras).

Several Git of researchers, developers…

We propose here just an example of a magnificent interactive web app for easy creating timelapse of annual Landsat imagery (1984-2021) for any location around the globe created by Qiusheng Wu, Assistant Professor at the Geography Department of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.