Practical GIS

Collecting some data

Now that we have our software installed and configured, we can focus on collecting some open source data. Data collecting (or data capture) is one of the key expertise of a GIS professional and it often covers a major part of a project budget. Surveying is expensive (for example, equipment, amortization, staff, and so on); however, buying data can also be quite costly. On the other hand, there is open and free data out there, which can drastically reduce the cost of basic analysis. It has some drawbacks, though. For example, the licenses are much harder to attune with commercial activity, because some of them are more restrictive.

There are two types of data collection. The first one is primary data collection, where ...