Coverage Analysis with Open Source Tools

Part 6 - IEEE Broadcast Technology: Fall 2016

URLs referred to in the article:

QGIS Web Site:

http://www.qgis.org/en/site/index.html

QGIS Additional Installation Instructions:

http://www.qgis.org/en/site/index.html

U.S. Census Bureau cartographic boundary shapefiles:

https://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/tiger-cart-boundary.html

DIVA-GIS - boundary shapefiles and GIS data for many countries:

http://www.diva-gis.org/gdata

7-Zip - Program for decompressing and extracting compressed files and tar archives in Windows, Linux and OSX:

http://www.7-zip.org/

U.S. Census Bureau State Boundaries:

https://www2.census.gov/geo/tiger/TIGER2015/STATE/

U.S. Census Bureau National Gazetteer Files (2015):

https://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/gazetteer2015.html

Mapping Data with QGIS

My Fall 2016 column describes how to get started with QGIS, a free and open source geographic information system.

QGIS is available for Linux, OS-X, and Windows platforms. See the article and the links above for information on installing in. The the article, I built maps using data from the U.S. Census Bureau and other agencies. The data displayed on the maps came from TVStudy 2.0 and PNG map overlays created using the SPLAT propagation software and the Python programs I described in previous articles. To make it easier to get started with QGIS, I've made copies of the map and data files referencd in the article available for download from this file directories below. In the directory listing, click on the small down arrow to download the file. The map layer styles can be customized to improve the map appearance. See the article for information on how to load styles.

• Layer data files for QGIS
• QGIS style files (.qml)
• Sample TVStudy output files

Questions, additions or comments?