ILWIS

Last updated
ILWIS
Developer(s) 52°North ILWIS Community
Stable release
3.8.6 / 22 January 2020;2 years ago (2020-01-22)
Repository
Written in C++
Operating system Windows
Type Geographic information system
License GPL-2.0-only
Website 52north.org/downloads/ilwis

Integrated Land and Water Information System (ILWIS) is a geographic information system (GIS) and remote sensing software for both vector and raster processing. Its features include digitizing, editing, analysis and display of data, and production of quality maps. ILWIS was initially developed and distributed by ITC Enschede (International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation) in the Netherlands for use by its researchers and students. Since 1 July 2007, it has been released as free software under the terms of the GPL-2.0-only license. [1] [2] Having been used by many students, teachers and researchers for more than two decades, ILWIS is one of the most user-friendly integrated vector and raster software programmes currently available. ILWIS has some very powerful raster analysis modules, a high-precision and flexible vector and point digitizing module, a variety of very practical tools, as well as a great variety of user guides and training modules all available for downloading. The current version is ILWIS 3.8.6. Similar to the GRASS GIS in many respects, ILWIS is currently available natively only on Microsoft Windows. However, a Linux Wine manual has been released. [3]

Contents

History

In late 1984, ITC was awarded a grant from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which led to developing a geographic information system (GIS) which could be used as a tool for land use planning and watershed management studies. By the end of 1988, a DOS version 1.0 of the Integrated Land and Water Information System (ILWIS) was released. Two years later, ILWIS was made commercial with ITC establishing a worldwide distributors network. ILWIS 2.0 for Windows was released at the end of 1996, and ILWIS 3.0 by mid-2001. On 1 January 2004, ILWIS 3.2 was released as a shareware (one-month trial offer). Since July 1, 2007, ILWIS has been distributed as an open source software under the GPL-2.0-only license. [4]

Release history

This table is based on .

Old VersionCurrent VersionFuture Version
BranchVersionRelease dateSignificant changes
3.13.1April 2002
Patch 3.11September 2002Direct import of Aster satellite images level 1a and 1b, including all needed geometric and radiometric corrections. This functionality is integrated in the Import Map Wizard.
Stereopair from DTM - Stereo pair from DTM operation creates a stereo pair from a single raster map and a Digital Terrain Model (DTM). These stereo pairs have the same usability as the Epipolar Stereo Pair.
Patch 3.12aAugust 2003ID Grid map - creates a polygon map given a coordinate system and an attribute table. The polygon map consists of rectangular grid cells with a unique ID and can be linked to a table with attribute data when sample data is available.
Spherical Distance option was added to the operations Spatial Correlation, Cross Variogram, Nearest Point, Moving Average, Moving Surface, Kriging and CoKriging. This option calculates distances over the sphere instead of in a plane.
Export to ArcPad .PRJ - ILWIS coordinate systems can be exported to an ArcPad .prj file.
3.23.2January, 2004Spatial Multiple Criteria Evaluation (SMCE)
Hydrologic Flow Operations
Find Datum Parameters Wizard
GARtrip import
Patch 3.21August, 2004Extensions in Spatial Multiple Criteria Evaluation - slicing, histograms, aggregated values, and an improvement in class map standardization.
Improvement in calling external executable files - Support for parameter passing, wait-till-finished option and error handling, and inclusion in a script as part of a batch process.
Support for coordinates for images from the MeteoSat-8 satellite.
3.33.3September 2005The SMCE application extended with overlay of reference maps, combination of spatial and non-spatial MCE, and interactive function graphs for standardization.
Applications for DEM hydroprocessing implemented, like topological optimization, drainage network extraction, catchment extraction, horton statistics etc.
Georeferencing with additional supports up to 8 fiducial marks, sub-pixel precision and 3D coordinate transformations using 7 or 10 datum parameters.
Import and export using the GDAL library.
Projections for geostationary satellites.
Calculation and statistical functions for map lists.
3.43.4 OpenJuly 1, 2007GPL version from 52°North with proprietary components removed.
3.53.5December 12, 2008Introduction of plug-in system for applications. Started with the Geonetcast toolbox.
3.63.6April 21, 2009Refactoring of the whole vector system of Ilwis and with that a 25 new applications mainly, but not exclusively, about set operations on vector types. First implementation of the second generation Geonetcast toolbox.
3.73.7March 25, 2010Added number of new applications.
3.7.1September 15, 2010A number of bug fixes to ILWIS 3.7.
3.7.224 May 2011A number of bug (from 3.7.1) fixes.
3.83.8April 7, 2012Massive rewrite of the whole visualization of maps. This rewrite expanded the tools for visual analysis substantially and improved the overall performance of the drawing process.
3.8.1September 19, 2012A number of bug fixes.
3.8.2January 16, 2013A number of bug (from 3.8.1) fixes as well as a few new features.
3.8.3April 15, 2014This release contains several bug (from 3.8.2) fixes as well as a few new features.
3.8.4May 23, 2014Several bug fixes, improvements and a few new features.
3.8.5September 3, 2015Several bug fixes, improvements and a few new features.
3.8.6January 22, 2020Several bug fixes, improvements and a few new features.
Layer visualization in ILWIS Ilwis38a.png
Layer visualization in ILWIS

Features

ILWIS uses GIS techniques that integrate image processing capabilities, a tabular database and conventional GIS characteristics. [5] The major features include:

Roadmap

The next major version of Ilwis will be based on the Ilwis NG framework (in development). This framework aims at being a connection hub between various heterogeneous data and processing sources (local-remote). Integrating them in a consistent way and presenting them in a unified to the end users (at both programming and user interface level). The framework will be cross platform (ILWIS is now limited to Windows only) and will be deployable on mobile devices.

See also

Related Research Articles

Geographic information system System to capture, manage and present geographic data

A geographic information system (GIS) is a type of database containing geographic data, combined with software tools for managing, analyzing, and visualizing those data. In a broader sense, one may consider such a system to also include human users and support staff, procedures and workflows, body of knowledge of relevant concepts and methods, and institutional organizations.

GRASS GIS

Geographic Resources Analysis Support System is a geographic information system (GIS) software suite used for geospatial data management and analysis, image processing, producing graphics and maps, spatial and temporal modeling, and visualizing. It can handle raster, topological vector, image processing, and graphic data.

A GIS software program is a computer program to support the use of a geographic information system, providing the ability to create, store, manage, query, analyze, and visualize geographic data, that is, data representing phenomena for which location is important. The GIS software industry encompasses a broad range of commercial and open-source products that provide some or all of these capabilities within various information technology architectures.

Manifold System

Manifold System is a geographic information system (GIS) software package developed by Manifold Software Limited that runs on Microsoft Windows. Manifold System handles both vector and raster data, includes spatial SQL, a built-in Internet Map Server (IMS), and other general GIS features.

ArcSDE is a server-software sub-system that aims to enable the usage of Relational Database Management Systems for spatial data. The spatial data may then be used as part of a geodatabase.

ArcGIS Geographic information system maintained by Esri

ArcGIS is a family of client software, server software, and online geographic information system (GIS) services developed and maintained by Esri. ArcGIS was first released in 1999 and originally was released as ARC/INFO, a command line based GIS system for manipulating data. ARC/INFO was later merged into ArcGIS Desktop, which was eventually superseded by ArcGIS Pro in 2015. ArcGIS Pro works in 2D and 3D for cartography and visualization, and includes Artificial Intelligence (AI).

gvSIG Desktop application for working with geographic data

gvSIG, geographic information system (GIS), is a desktop application designed for capturing, storing, handling, analyzing and deploying any kind of referenced geographic information in order to solve complex management and planning problems. gvSIG is known for having a user-friendly interface, being able to access the most common formats, both vector and raster ones. It features a wide range of tools for working with geographic-like information.

Kosmo is a desktop geographic information system (GIS) with advanced functions. It is the first of a series of developments that are being made available to the community.

Geomorphometry, or geomorphometrics, is the science and practice of measuring the characteristics of terrain, the shape of the surface of the Earth, and the effects of this surface form on human and natural geography. It gathers various mathematical, statistical and image processing techniques that can be used to quantify morphological, hydrological, ecological and other aspects of a land surface. Common synonyms for geomorphometry are geomorphological analysis, terrain morphometry, terrain analysis, and land surface analysis. Geomorphometrics is the discipline based on the computational measures of the geometry, topography and shape of the Earth's horizons, and their temporal change. This is a major component of geographic information systems (GIS) and other software tools for spatial analysis.

GDAL Translator library for raster and vector geospatial data formats

The Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL) is a computer software library for reading and writing raster and vector geospatial data formats, and is released under the permissive X/MIT style free software license by the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. As a library, it presents a single abstract data model to the calling application for all supported formats. It may also be built with a variety of useful command line interface utilities for data translation and processing. Projections and transformations are supported by the PROJ library.

In cartography, rubbersheeting refers to the process by which a layer is distorted to allow it to be seamlessly joined to an adjacent geographic layer of matching imagery, such as satellite imagery which are digital maps. This is sometimes referred to as image-to-vector conflation. Often this has to be done when layers created from adjacent map sheets are joined together. Rubber-sheeting is necessary because the imagery and the vector data will rarely match up correctly due to various reasons, such as the angle at which the image was taken, the curvature of the surface of the earth, minor movements in the imaging platform, and other errors in the imagery.

MapInfo Pro is a desktop geographic information system (GIS) software product produced by Precisely and used for mapping and location analysis. MapInfo Pro allows users to visualize, analyze, edit, interpret, understand and output data to reveal relationships, patterns, and trends. MapInfo Pro allows users to explore spatial data within a dataset, symbolize features, and create maps.

Field (geography) Property that varies over space

In the context of spatial analysis, geographic information systems, and geographic information science, a field is a property that fills space, and varies over space, such as temperature or density. This use of the term has been adopted from physics and mathematics, due to their similarity to physical fields such as the electromagnetic field or gravitational field. Synonymous terms include spatially dependent variable (geostatistics), statistical surface, and intensive property and crossbreeding between these disciplines is common. The simplest formal model for a field is the function, which yields a single value given a point in space

SOCET SET is a software application that performs functions related to photogrammetry. It is developed and published by BAE Systems. SOCET SET was among the first commercial digital photogrammetry software programs. Prior to the development of digital solutions, photogrammetry programs were primarily analog or custom systems built for government agencies.

Web mapping Process of using the maps delivered by geographic information systems (GIS) in World Wide Web

A Web mapping or an online mapping is the process of using the maps delivered by geographic information systems (GIS) on the Internet, more specifically in the World Wide Web (WWW). A web map or an online map is both served and consumed, thus web mapping is more than just web cartography, it is a service by which consumers may choose what the map will show. Web GIS emphasizes geodata processing aspects more involved with design aspects such as data acquisition and server software architecture such as data storage and algorithms, than it does the end-user reports themselves.

SPRING is a freeware GIS and remote sensing image processing system with an object-oriented data model which provides for the integration of raster and vector data representations in a single environment. It has Windows and Linux versions and provides a comprehensive set of functions, including tools for Satellite Image Processing, Digital Terrain Modeling, Spatial Analysis, Geostatistics, Spatial Statistics, Spatial Databases and Map Management.

Whitebox Geospatial Analysis Tools

Whitebox Geospatial Analysis Tools (GAT) is an open-source and cross-platform Geographic information system (GIS) and remote sensing software package that is distributed under the GNU General Public License. It has been developed by the members of the University of Guelph Centre for Hydrogeomatics and is intended for advanced geospatial analysis and data visualization in research and education settings. The package features a friendly graphical user interface (GUI) with help and documentation built into the dialog boxes for each of the more than 410 analysis tools. Users are also able to access extensive off-line and online help resources. The Whitebox GAT project started as a replacement for the Terrain Analysis System (TAS), a geospatial analysis software package John Lindsay wrote. The current release support raster and vector (shapefile) data structures. There is also extensive functionality for processing laser scanner (LiDAR) data containing LAS files.

Vector tiles, tiled vectors or vectiles are packets of geographic data, packaged into pre-defined roughly-square shaped "tiles" for transfer over the web. This is an emerging method for delivering styled web maps, combining certain benefits of pre-rendered raster map tiles with vector map data. As with the widely used raster tiled web maps, map data is requested by a client as a set of "tiles" corresponding to square areas of land of a pre-defined size and location. Unlike raster tiled web maps, however, the server returns vector map data, which has been clipped to the boundaries of each tile, instead of a pre-rendered map image.

DAT/EM Systems International is an Alaska-based company that develops digital photogrammetric mapping applications to extract and edit 3D vector terrain and object features from stereo imagery and point clouds. DAT/EM Systems International develops solutions for the photogrammetry, engineering & GIS industries.

Geographic data and information is defined in the ISO/TC 211 series of standards as data and information having an implicit or explicit association with a location relative to Earth.

References

  1. "ITC's GIS software ILWIS migrates to open source". 2007-01-30. Archived from the original on 2007-06-21. Retrieved 2007-06-26.
  2. "ILWIS 3.4 Open". 52°North. 2007-03-27. Archived from the original on 2007-07-07. Retrieved 2007-07-01.
  3. "ILWIS in Linux". World Institute for Conservation and Environment, WICE. Retrieved 2009-11-19.
  4. "FOSS4G 2007 : ILWIS and 52°North: From closed source to open source and interoperable image services". Archived from the original on 2007-09-28. Retrieved 2007-07-02.
  5. Spiteri (1997). Remote Sensing 96 Integrated Applications (1 ed.). Taylor & Francis. p. 380. ISBN   90-5410-855-X.
  6. Wim Koolhoven and Jelle Wind (1996). "Domains in ILWIS: system knowledge about meaning of data". Proceedings of the Second Joint European Conference & Exhibition on Geographical Information, Barcelona, Spain. IOS Press. I: 77–80. ISBN   90-5199-268-8. OCLC   164762055.
  7. A Partovi (2003). Suitability Study Of ASTER Data Geometry To Digitize Contour Lines In ILWIS (PDF). Master's degree thesis.
  8. J Hendrikse (2000). "Geostatistics in ILWIS". International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing.
  9. Nag, S. K. (2000). "Digital Elevation Modeling using ILWIS 2.1 in Parts of Purulia District, West Bengal. India". International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. 33 (B$/2): 726–733. ISSN   0256-1840.
  10. Quan, N. H. "Rainfall-runoff Modeling in the Ungauged Can Le Catchment, Saigon River Basin" (PDF).{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)