GRASS GIS Alternatives

Garmin BaseCamp is a navigation map and Geographic Information System (GIS) software package primarily intended for use with Garmin GPS navigation devices. You can use this as a full features navigation application for planning your next biking, hiking, motorcycling, driving off, or road trip. It shows maps, plan routes, mark waypoints, and tracks to transfer them on any other device. A highlighting feature is the Track Draw feature that allows you to trace your planned route and see the elevation changes. This helps you determine the difficulty of a hike or bike ride.

BaseCamp shows your topographic map information in 2-D or 3-D on your computer display with contour lines and elevation profiles. BaseCamp software allows you to geotag pictures, connecting them with exact waypoints. You can see the precise scenery at the location you want to go to. With BaseCamp and a BirdsEye Satellite Imagery feature, you can transfer an unlimited amount of satellite images to your device and seamlessly integrate those images into your maps to get a true representation of your surroundings. All in all, Garmin BaseCamp is an advanced navigation system that you can use for traveling and planning trips.

QGIS 3 is an open-source, cross-platform desktop geographic information 3D navigation system that supports viewing, editing, and analysis of geospatial data. QGIS can display multiple layers containing different sources or depictions of sources. It has a simulation of landscape areas in 3D, supports vector layers, raster layers, vector data support in the form of line, point, or polygon. QGIS 3 separates itself as a leader in cartography as it places practicality and usability above all.

The previous versions lagged with some functions, but panning and zooming with large data from the Geo package is smooth on QGIS 3 with the fast cached labeling and redraw time. You can place the labels manually in case it is overlapping in automatic mode. QGIS 3 introduces some new tools that make your workflow smoother. The tools include tracing at offsets, tracking edits from multiple users, editing features that stick to topology, easier shapes with new CAD tools, add queries between numerical values. All in all, QGIS 3 is an advanced navigation tool that you can use as a professional user.

gVSIG is an open-source, powerful, and user-friendly interoperable geographic information system GIS that you can use anywhere in the world. The application is made in Java for Windows, macOS, and Linux that can be used for capturing, handling, storing, developing, and analyzing any kind of geographic information for solving complex management and planning problems. You can access vector and raster graphics directly from the interface. The software includes a wide variety of tools for working with geographic formation, including layout creation tools, query tools, networks, geoprocessing, etc.

The raster and remote sensing methods include statistics, filters, histogram, scale range, enhance, save to raster file, vectorization, Region of Interest (ROI) definition, general components, georeferencing, geo-location, supervised classification, band algebra, image profiles, decision tree, main components, tasseled cap, image fusion, scatter diagram, and mosaics.

You can integrate both databases and remote data in the same view through OGC standards. It also includes a plugin system to further extend the application’s functionality or to develop tailor-made solutions. Some other features include pan, zoom, locator, and selectable frame rate in UI; selection methods include point selection, rectangle, layer, polygon, polyline, circle, buffer zone, and inverted selection.

ILWIS, also known as the Integrated Land and Water Information System, is a remote sensing and GIS software that comes with a complete package of image processing, digital mapping, and spatial analysis tools. The software is easy to learn, even for beginners. Additionally, the website has a full range of extensive tutorials. With the integrated raster and vector design graphics, the ILWIS can produce photorealistic maps of plains, terrains, and cities. You can import or export the data in various formats.

The on-screen and tablet mode allows for mode convenient touch base gesture use. ILWIS has a comprehensive set of image processing tools like image georeferencing, mosaicking, orthophoto, and transformation. Moreover, spatial data analysis and advanced modeling are also included. The 3D visualization with interactive editing UI is designed for optimal view finding. The rich projection system can render and scale distance up to hundreds of meters. Other features are Geostatistical analyses with Kriging for improved Interpolation, Production, and visualization of stereo image pairs, Spatial Multiple Criteria Evaluation, and hydrological processing.

SAGA GIS is a fast, open-source geographic information system software for automated geoscientific analysis. SAGA GIS is projected to give researchers an actual but easily learnable stage for applying geoscientific methods. This is achieved by the application programming interface (API) included in SAGA GIS. The file access module takes you to the interface where you can find a library of tables, images, vector designs, grid file formats, shapefiles, Esri grids, and many other grids that are supported by the Geospatial Data Abstraction Library.

The grids can be filtered out by Laplacian, Gaussian, and multi-directional Lee grids. You can divide the area section by Interpolation from vector data by using the nearest piece of land, triangulation, or inverse distance techniques. The Geostatistics module comprises ordinary and universal kriging, residual analysis, single regression, multi regression analysis, and variance analysis. Some other tools include grid calculator, Grid discretization, skeletonization, image classification, projections, simulation of dynamic processes, terrain analysis, and much more.

GeoDa is a GIS-based software that provides a user-friendly and graphical interface to methods of exploratory spatial data analysis to conduct visualization, spatial analysis, spatial modeling, and spatial auto-correction. It can also perform basic linear regression. As for spatial models, both the spatial lag model and the spatial error model are estimated by maximum likelihood. If you want to load high-volume data, GeoDa should be aggregated to areal units first. The program is available for Windows, Linux, and macOS.

GeoDa supports a larger variety of vector data in different formats. You can work with shapefiles, geodatabases, GeoJSON, MapInfo, GML, KML, and other vector data formats supported by the GDAL library. The program converts coordinates in table format to one of these spatial data formats and converts data between different file formats such as .csv to .dbf or shapefile to GeoJSON.

Whitebox GAT is an open-source, cross-platform GIS-based software package that is intended for advanced geospatial analysis and data visualization in research and education. The package features a friendly GUI with help and documentation built into the dialog boxes for each of the more than 410 analysis tools. You can also access extensive offline and online help resources. Whitebox GAT contains more than 385 tools to perform spatial analysis on raster data sets. Some GIS tools include distance operations, buffer, weighted overlays, area analysis, multi-criteria evaluation, and clumping. Image processing tools include k-means classification, numerous spatial filters, image mosaicing, NDVI, resampling, and contrast enhancement.

The software also has a bunch of Terrain analysis tools, including surface derivatives of the slope, aspect, and curvatures, hill shading, wetness index, relative stream power index, relative landscape position indices, and much more. All in all, Whitebox GAT is an advanced software for all your GIS projects.

uDig is a geographic information system-based program that is based on the Eclipse platform and written in Java. uDig allows you to solve complex vector operations with specialized hydrology tools. It supports various file formats like PostGIS, shapefiles, WMS, and many others. The drag and drop interface makes it one of the most easy-to-use GIS software. You can manually add data that includes a number of formats such as ArcSDE, Oracle, DB2, and more. It provides the framework on which you can build complex analytical capabilities and gradually incorporating those capabilities into the main application.

One of the highlighting features of uDig is that it has a catalog of web map tiles that are available as services. uDig’s Mapnik lets you import base maps which means that you are a couple of steps away from having solid base maps added in your view. All in all, uDig is a complete package for beginners as well as for commercial use.

FalconView is an open-source software based on a geographical mapping system that is available for Windows, Linux, and mobile OS and is mostly used for combat and defense. It displays various types of maps and geographically referenced overlays. Many types of maps are supported, but the primary ones are aeronautical charts, satellite images, and elevation maps. FalconView also supports a large number of overlay types that can be displayed over any map background.

It supports a wide variety of data types like LiDAR, KMZ, and MrSID. You can also use it for viewing satellite and elevation data. For example, SkyView mode can perform fly-throughs and has the ability to open MDX files. It allows you to render features in 3D like LiDAR and elevation data. All in all, FalconView is an advanced tool that you can use for defense systems as well as for GIS.

OrbisGIS is an open-source and cross-platform geographical information system software that provides new methods and techniques to represent, model, process, and share spatial data, making it easy to monitor geographical territories and manage their evolution. It is more of an integrated modeling platform containing analytical tools for computing various indicators at different spatial and temporal scales. It has a built-in Coordinate Transformation Suite library to perform coordinate transformations using geodetic algorithms. A separate plugin for NoiseModelling can be downloaded that is a fully GIS-implemented environmental noise calculation model.

The program is made in Java for Linux, macOS, and Windows. Some other features include the OSI platform, Cartographic tools, SQL & Groovy consoles, Data formats including SHP, OSM, KML, GeoJson, and API for developers. All in all, OrbisGIS is a simple but cross-platform compatible software that you can use in ca you want to switch from its alternatives.

Diva GIS is a geographic data analysis and mapping program based on GIS. With the Diva GIS, you can make a geographic structure from a small area to a world map using state boundaries, rivers, a satellite image, and the locations of sites where an animal species was observed. It also provides free spatial data for the whole world that you can use in DIVA-GIS or other programs. You can use the program to analyze data like making raster maps of the distribution of biological diversity to find areas that have high, low, or complementary levels of diversity. Additionally, you can also map and query climate data. The Diva GIS can also predict species distributions using the BIOCLIM or DOMAIN models.

DIVA-GIS is particularly useful for mapping and analyzing biodiversity data, such as the distribution of species or other point distributions. It reads and writes standard data formats such as ESRI shapefiles, so interoperability is not a problem. The program is available for Windows.

MapWindow GIS is an open-source GIS mapping framework software that you can reprogram to perform different or more customized tasks. Plugins for this purpose are also available that expand its functionality and capability. The core component of MapWindow GIS is the ActiveX control which is written in C++ language. The program includes tools like core mapping, data management, and data analysis. The app includes standard GIS data visualization features as well as DBF attribute table editing, Shapefile editing, and data converters. MapWindow GIS supports dozens of standard GIS formats, including Shapefiles, GeoTIFF, ESRI ArcInfo ASCII, and binary grids.

The interface is easy to use with a default layout that includes a map area, a legend pane, and a preview-map pane. In addition, there are also built-in toolbar buttons that allow you to create, save and open project files, and navigate and print the map.

JUMP GIS is an open-source, cross-platform application based on GIS and is written in Java. JUMP GIS offers vector editing and raster viewing support. It has database connectivity in a wide range of GIS formats. You can also create primitive amps, but the support is not that wide. It has a list of more than 15 plugins that you can use to maximize its functionality and customize the software to perform specific tasks.

Some highlighting features include Editing toolsets with CAD, Raster display, Database connections, Web processing, Vector processing with Sextante, Coordinate reference system, Watermarking, Scripting support, Global Positioning Systems (GPS), GPX importing, Styling, charts, and plotting. All in all, JUMP GIS is a great GIS mapping tool that you can consider among its alternatives.