A History of Open Source GIS, from Humble Beginnings to

World-Changing Applications 23 Jun 2017 9:00am,

by Anthony Calamito

The advent of digital mapping and geospatial information systems (GIS)

has completely changed the way humans think about and interact with
the world around them. The concept of overlapping discrete layers of
location information for decision-making was first introduced by Ian
McHarg, a landscape architect, in the 1960s. Around the same time,
Roger Tomlinson known universally as the Father of GIS
completed his doctoral thesis focused on the use of computing
methods for the overlay of geospatial information. Roger then worked to
create the first computerized GIS, the Canada Geographic Information
System, which was used primarily for surveying.

The roots of open source GIS can be traced back to the U.S. Department
of the Interior in 1978. Since then, open source GIS has permeated many
industries, both government, and commercial, and has naturally had a
different trajectory and impact than its proprietary, license-based
counterpart. The U.S. Department of Labor named geospatial technology
as one of the top three most important high-growth industries in the 21st
century. The evolution of open source GIS over the past four decades has
lead to its many groundbreaking and impactful applications today.

The Beginnings of GIS: MOSS and GRASS

In 1978, the U.S. Department of the Interior created the Map Overlay
and Statistical System (MOSS). MOSS was created for the purpose of
tracking and evaluating the impact of mine development on the
environment, wildlife and migration patterns. It was the first broadly
deployed, vector based, interactive GIS, as well as the first GIS to be
deployed for production use on minicomputers.

GRASS (Geographic Resources Analysis Support System) followed shortly

thereafter, with more than 350 modules for processing raster,
topological vector, image processing and graphic data. The software was
originally created for use by the U.S. military to aid in land management
and environmental planning. GRASS is widely used today in both
scientific and commercial settings for geospatial data management and
analysis, image processing, spatial and temporal modeling and the
creation of graphics and maps.
GeoTools, GDAL, PostGIS and GeoServer Further Advance GIS
Initiatives

In 1996, the University of Leeds set out on a project to create a Java-

based GIS library that could be incorporated into different applications
as needed. The end result, GeoTools, serves as an open source library for
the manipulation of geospatial data and is widely used today in
geospatial web feature servers, web map servers and desktop
applications.
Four years later, a cross-platform geospatial library called the Geospatial
Data Abstraction Library (GDAL) came on the scene. GDAL makes it
possible for GIS applications to support the varying data formats that
exist throughout the GIS world. It additionally comes with a variety of
useful command line utilities for processing and translating data into
various formats. With support for over 50 raster and 20 vector data
formats, it is the most widely used geospatial data access library in the
world, supporting applications like Google Earth, Geographic Resource
Analysis Support System (GRASS), QGIS, the Feature Manipulation
Engine (FME) and ArcGIS.

In 2001, Refractions Research developed open source program PostGIS

to spatially enable data stored in the Postgres database. The same year,
GeoServer, a Java application for publishing data as standards-based
web services, was also created. Both PostGIS and GeoServer were
incredibly successful projects and are known today as the most widely
used open source GIS database and GIS server.
Open Source Projects Further Drive Innovation and
Education

QGIS is widely regarded as the premiere open source desktop GIS.

Released in 2002, it incorporates analytical functions from GRASS, along
with data format support from GDAL, into a user-friendly desktop
application for performing data editing, cartography and analysis. QGIS
is interoperable with other open source GIS applications, for example;
managing data in the PostGIS database and publishing data to
GeoServer as web services.

As open source GIS continued to gain traction in the early 2000s, OSGeo
and LocationTech were created to incubate open source projects. OSGeo,
launched in 2006, was designed to support the collaborative
development of open source geospatial software, as well as to promote
its widespread use. LocationTech, a working group within the Eclipse
Foundation, was created to facilitate GIS collaboration between
academics, industry and community.

In 2011, Geo for All, the Open Source Geospatial Foundations

educational outreach program, was founded with the goal of making
geospatial education and opportunities accessible to everyone. As a
result of the foundations work, many educational resources for open
source GIS are now freely available on the internet, including the
FOSS4G Academy and the GeoAcademy. Geo for All eventually leads to
the establishment of open source geospatial laboratories and research
centers across the world to support the development of open-source
geospatial software technologies, training and expertise.
Commercially Support of an Open Source GIS

In 2013, Boundless, the company I work for, became the first company
to provide commercial support and maintenance for the worlds most
popular open source GIS applications at the database, server, desktop,
web, mobile and cloud levels. Boundless product suite ensures that
organizations leveraging open source GIS in operational settings have
the technical support they need to succeed. The company provides
continual enhancements and maintenance patches for the most popular
open source GIS software.

The Future and Beyond

Todays modern computing challenges require software to work in the
cloud and support the demands presented by the massive volumes of
data being created. Two open source GIS software solutions designed to
meet these challenges include GeoMesa, an open-source, distributed,
spatiotemporal database, and GeoTrellis, a geographic data processing
engine for high-performance applications.

Both solutions, introduced in 2014, enable the processing of geospatial

big data in the cloud. Since they are built on open source frameworks
and do not require licenses, users can scale up as much as is needed
without being penalized.

Open source GIS holds great promise and potential, as it allows for
increased collaboration, the sharing of valuable data and access to key
resources. With its many environmental, government, public safety and
health applications, open source GIS and the projects it empowers have
the potential to change the world.