QGIS Training Manual Release 3.4

Background

In 2008 we launched the Gentle Introduction to GIS, a completely free, open content resource for people who want to learn about GIS without being overloaded with jargon and new terminology. It was sponsored by the South African government and has been a phenomenal success, with people all over the world writing to us to tell us how they are using the materials to run University Training Courses, teach themselves GIS and so on.

The Gentle Introduction is not a software tutorial, but rather aims to be a generic text (although we used QGIS in all examples) for someone learning about GIS. There is also the QGIS manual which provides a detailed functional overview of the QGIS application. However, it is not structured as a tutorial, but rather as a reference guide. At Linfiniti Consulting CC. we frequently run training courses and have realised that a third resource is needed - one that leads the reader sequentially through learning the key aspects of QGIS in a trainer-trainee format - which prompted us to produce this work.
This training manual is intended to provide all the materials needed to run a 5 day course on QGIS, PostgreSQL and PostGIS. The course is structured with content to suit novice, intermediate and advanced users alike and has many exercises complete with annotated answers throughout the text.

License

The Free Quantum GIS Training Manual by Linfiniti Consulting CC. is based on an earlier version from Linfiniti and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at below.
We have published this QGIS training manual under a liberal license that allows you to freely copy, modify and redistribute this work. A complete copy of the license is available at the end of this document. In simple terms, the usage guidelines are as follows: 

• You may not represent this work as your own work, or remove any authorship text or credits from this work. 

• You may not redistribute this work under more restrictive permissions than those under which it was provided to you.

• If you add a substantive portion to the work and contribute it back to the project (at least one complete module) you may add your name to the end of the authors list for this document (which will appear on the front page) 

• If you contribute minor changes and corrections you may add yourself to the contributors list below. • If you translate this document in its entirety, you may add your name to the authors list in the form “Translated by Joe Bloggs”. 

• If you sponsor a module or lesson, you may request the author to include an acknowledgement in the beginning of each lesson contributed, e.g.:

• If you are unsure about what you may do under this license, please contact us at office@linfiniti.com and we will advise you if what you intend doing is acceptable. 

• If you publish this work under a self publishing site such as https://www.lulu.com we request that you donate the profits to the QGIS project. 

• You may not commercialise this work, except with the expressed permission of the authors. To be clear, by commercialisation we mean that you may not sell for profit, create commercial derivative works (e.g. selling content for use as articles in a magazine).
The exception to this is if all the profits are given to the QGIS project. You may (and we encourage you to do so) use this work as a text book when conducting training courses, even if the course itself is commercial in nature. In other words, you are welcome to make money by running a training course that uses this work as a text book, but you may not profit off the sales of the book itself - all such profits should be contributed back to QGIS.

Data The sample data that accompanies this resource is freely available and comes from the following sources: 

• Streets and Places datasets from OpenStreetMap (https://www.openstreetmap.org/) 

• Property boundaries (urban and rural), water bodies from NGI (http://www.ngi.gov.za/) 

• SRTM DEM from the CGIAR-CGI (http://srtm.csi.cgiar.org/) Download the prepared dataset from the Training data repository and unzip the file. All the necessary data are provided in the exercise_data folder.

Source files and Issue reports 

The source of this document is available at GitHub QGIS Documentation repository. Consult GitHub.com for instructions on how to use the git version control system. Despite our efforts, you could find some errors or miss some information while following this training. Please report them at https://github.com/qgis/QGIS-Documentation/issues.

Latest Version 

You can always obtain the latest version of this document by visiting the online version which is part of the QGIS documentation website (https://docs.qgis.org). 

Preparing Exercise Data

This process is intended for course conveners, or more experienced QGIS users who wish to create localised sample data sets for their course. Default data sets are provided with the Training Manual, but you may follow these instructions if you wish to replace the default data sets.

The sample data provided with the Training Manual refers to the town of Swellendam and its surroundings. Swellendam is located about 2 hours’ east of Cape Town in the Western Cape of South Africa. The dataset contains feature names in both English and Afrikaans.

 Anyone can use this dataset without difficulty, but you may prefer to use data from your own country or home town. If you choose to do so, your localised data will be used in all lessons from Module 3 to Module 7.2. Later modules use more complex data sources which may or may not be available for your region.

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QGIS Training Manual Release 3.4