OPEN SOURCE AND FREEWARE

SOFTWARE FOR COMPUTER MAPPING

List compiled by Mee Yang 5/2013

Stat Silk

Stat softwares: StatPlanet, StatTrend, and StatWorld

This site has three different softwares: StatPlanet, StatTrend, and StatWorld. They are all web-based and desktop software. These can be downloaded for free and use for many purposes such as publishing an interactive flash on the web, creating flash based interactive web maps and graphs.

vgSIG Association

vgSIG Desktop

This description is from gvSIG association: “gvSIG Desktop is a powerful geographic information system (GIS) designed to offer a free solution to all needs related to geographic information management. It is characterized as a comprehensive, easy to use solution, it adapts to the needs of any GIS user. Access to the most common formats, both vector and raster, both local and remote is possible. It integrates with OGC standards, and has a large number of tools to work with geographic information (visualization, mapping, geoprocessing, networks, etc.). All this features make gvSIG an ideal tool for users working with the territorial component.”

AutoREALM

AutoREALM

AutoREALM is a simple software you can design your own world. If you play World of War Craft or any other adventure games, it is almost similar to this game. But you do all the designing for your “castle, caves, cities dungeons and more.” AutoREALM is originally made by Andrew Gryc.

Buddy Space

Buddy Space

I thought this was a cool one because you can message your friends/classmates/group members about and on Map and tag them. This takes geography to another whole level like, geo-communication.

CartoWeb

CartoWeb

CartoWeb has demonstration that you can mess around with it to see what it can do first before downloading it. CartoWeb offers basic functionality such as browsing, querying, outline, recentering, layers management, tabs browsing and PDF printing. As CartoWeb stated it “is a comprehensive and ready-to-use Web-GIS (Geographical Information System) as well as a convenient framework for building advanced and customized applications.”

Wilbur

Wilbur

Wilbur is an open source software that is similar to Landserf. It is a terrain editor. It has tutorials that you can practice from, for example, you can make a terrain field look like an eroded landscape, show relief, elevation, TIN, rivers, etc. And It’s free but it ONLY works on Windows (2000/XP/Vista) in both 32 and 64-bit version. This is a great program for Cartography and Geographic Information System/Science users to use.

Chameleon

Chameleon

Chameleon is a free open source software and configurable for developing web mapping application. Similar to MicroCAM, Chameleon “provides a scripting interface for the MapServer for the construction of Web and stand-alone applications.” Script languages that are in this software are PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, Tcl, Java, and .NET flavors. And post it on your own website. Chameleon has a map reference you can look at to help you create a map, and help you understand the commands. This introduction will be the most helpful guide: http://www.mapserver.org/introduction.html#anatomy-of-a-mapserver-application.

CycleAtlas

Chameleon

Cycleatlas! The way it sounds, says it all. A map software that you can import your own cycling diary (tracks) from your GPS (data) and download it to Cylceatlas (your own custom road map). It supports GPX and TCX (Garmin Edges) format and can manage raster images, images from WMS servers, elevation data and shapefiles.

Diva-GIS

Diva-GIS

Diva-GIS has a tab of free spatial data you can use when using Diva-GIS. Diva-GIS has some exercises and tutorials you can view and practice from. Diva-GIS is a computer program for mapping and analyzing spatial data particularly organisms patterns and distribution. This can be used to make a world map, a state, or an area that you can focus on a particular specie on a particular location. Using the manual, you can find some helpful information on GIS/Cartography in general (http://www.diva-gis.org/docs/DIVA-GIS_manual_7.pdf)

EPANET

EPANET

EPANET is software that models water distribution piping systems. EPANET is public domain software that may be freely copied and distributed. It is a Windows 95/98/NT/XP program. EPANET performs extended period simulation of the water movement and quality behavior within pressurized pipe networks.

Flowmap

Flowmap

Flowmap is a freeware software. Flowmap is a software package dedicated to analyzing and displaying interaction or flow data. This type of data is special in the sense that there are two different geographic locations connected to each data item: an origin location where the flow starts and an destination location where the flow ends. The flow data itself can consist of people (e.g. commuters, shoppers, and hospital visitors), goods, and usage of agricultural services or telecommunication and so on.

However, most thematic mapping and GIS packages have little functionality for treating this kind of information. Now Flowmap fills this gap. Flowmap is a PC software package (Windows 95/98/2000/ME/XP and will in most cases also work within Windows Vista and Windows 7), developed at the Faculty of Geosciences of the Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

Virtual Terrian

Virtual Terrian

Virtual Terrian Project’s goal “is to foster the creation of tools for easily constructing any part of the real world in interactive, 3D digital form.” It has information on other tools and their own tools. They also have tutorials of how to import any data, get it ready for visualizing and then fly over the terrain. There FAQ is really helpful.

uDig

uDig

uDig is an open source software. It contains other applications (softwares) such as Eurobios, Arbonaut, Line Cleaner, DEWS, JGrass, DIVA GIS, and Globema. In these applications, uDig is used as a framework and/or as a delivery platform. uDig’s goal is to “provide a complete Java solution for desktop GIS data access, editing, and viewing.”

TNTmips

TNTmips

TNTmips Free is a geospatial analysis software. It is design to focus on a particular location, like a neighbor, not a whole city. You can learn about spatial data analysis, GIS, image processing, terrain analysis, CAD, desktop cartography, web-map publishing and related topics. It works for Windows and Macintosh. The TNTmips Free is similar to the TNTmips Pro but is limited to geodata size and extent. (There are tutorials.)

Saga GIS

Saga GIS

Check Saga GIS out for yourself. It is a unique program with many different features. It consist of…

SaTScan

SaTScan

SaTScan stated, it is a “free software that analyzes spatial, temporal and space-time data using the spatial, temporal or space-time scan statistics. It is designed for “performing geographical surveillance of disease, to detect spatial or space-time disease clusters, and to see if they are statistically significant; testing whether a disease is randomly distributed over space, over time or over space and time; evaluating the statistical significance of disease cluster alarms; and performing repeated time-periodic disease surveillance for early detection of disease out breaks.” An awesome article that used SaTScan http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/publicat/cdic-mcbc/30-1/pdf/CDIC_MCC_Vol30_1_ar_03-eng.pdf

Sharp Map

Sharp Map

SharpMap is an easy-to-use mapping library for use in web and desktop applications. It proves access to many types of GIS data, enables spatial querying of data, and renders beautiful maps. The engine is written in C# and based on the .Net 4.0 framework. There are tutorials for new SharpMap users under “Documentation”