Customer Reviews

Open Source GIS: A GRASS GIS Approach (Kluwer International Series in Engineering and Computer Science)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I bought this book because I needed to use GRASS and R to produce maps with the results of statistical analysis. Though I am an experienced programmer, I had never used R neither any GIS. The tutorials available on the Internet were enough to learn R, but GRASS was a brick wall.
After reading and trying the examples until page 200, I found myself able to work with raster and vectorial maps. Since I was completely illiterate on GIS, I learned in the book how the raster and vector data are organized, how to alter and combine maps and how to manage the vector databases. The sections about R and GRASS integration was very useful. Although it was of no particular interest to me, there are several sections about spatial analysis tools, 2D and 3D output, image processing and GRASS programing.
The book is not an exhaustive descriptions of the commands, which should be found on the GRASS documentation. It is more like a hands-on tutorial that makes you familiar with the system and the commands, even if you are novice. It will also be useful for people familiar with the graphic interface of other systems who need to start working with the command line.

I waited several months for this 3rd edition of Neteler and Mitasova's 'Open Source GIS: A GRASS GIS Approach'. I'm not disappointed.

Pros:
1. The book is a major re-write of the earlier edition, and uses GRASS version 6.x - which has many improvements from earlier GRASS versions
2. It has tons of example applications, drawn and derived from an up-to-date sample dataset for North Carolina. Examples span the fields of hydrology, remote sensing,and a large number of standard GIS operations on vector and raster datasets.
3. It is well organized and succinct in its language.

Cons:
1. There are several typos.
2. Some of the examples may not exactly work on your own system - the authors acknowledge this, as each version of GRASS has some variations in dependent packages and libraries.
3. Some of the pages are not cross-referenced right.

[...]

To summarize:
I first used GRASS (version 4.3) in the year 2000. While I recognized back then how powerful GRASS is, I found it quite difficult to learn and to appreciate. In 2005-07, I revisited GRASS (version 6.0) for my dissertation research, and found that it had improved vastly. This book is an excellent way for readers to get a taste of how powerful GRASS 6.x is. It will be most useful for students and researchers who learn by doing - you will not learn GRASS (or any other GIS software) by just reading. Also, this book alone will not answer all your questions about GRASS - use the friendly and resourceful GRASS mailing lists for specific help with your own GRASS GIS projects.

Get into this book and GRASS GIS, only if you are willing to use the command line! If you are a programmer and are used to learning new languages/software, you probably do not need this book - the material on the GRASS website would be enough for you. If like me, you dont consider yourself a programmer but 'can do' when needed, this book will be very useful.

I hope that a more affordable paperback version of the third edition comes out!

Open Source GIS: A GRASS GIS Approach is now on its third edition. I have all three editions. It is remarkable how much the program has advanced in six years. The third edition deals with version 6.x and is still invaluable to older users and new users alike. Many changes occurred between 5.x and 6.x. Sites have been replaced with point vectors. The GUI interface has advanced. Things are just not done the same way they used to be and since this is a UNIX program, the changes may not be intuitive for people used to the Mac or Windows OS.

GRASS is a free alternative to to ARC GIS. This book will help the user to unleash GRASS's power.

I bought this book for 2 reasons: I had tried to use GRASS for vector data processing - with mixed success - in the past, and wanted to gain a better understanding of its capabilities; and also because I had just been assigned some fairly difficult elevation data processing, and raster-based spatial analysis was something I had little experience with. The book succeeds on both counts. It has well-written explanations of basic GIS principles, and also describes operations in enough detail that one can replicate them with their own data.

While an amazing GIS application (I would actually call it a "GIS environment"), GRASS is not without its quirks. The book does a good job of steering a reader around potential roadblocks, and focuses on getting one going about the business of doing useful work. For example, they recommend using the GUI to set up a project, but then have you move back to using the command line interface (CLI) and X-based display window to accomplish the bulk of the work. This is brilliant. It showcases the ease with which GRASS commands can be chained together, and how other UNIX commands can be interleaved in the command sequences. Make no mistake, this book is written for an audience that is either familiar with, or willing to learn some UNIX. That alone makes it a refreshing change from many other books which feel apologetic when they stray away from the apparent comfort of a MS Windows-based GUI. GUI's are mentioned, but only briefly, and not in a way intended to be a useful guide. People looking for how to use GRASS via a GUI'd application would be better served by Gary Sherman's "Desktop GIS" book, which discusses how to use GRASS through the excellent Quantum GIS application.

The book is logically laid out, and generally well written. There are a few small grammar quirks which tell me that the authors are not native English speakers, but they are minor, and don't actually cause the reader to stumble over any sections. Code sections are well-defined by the use of a different font, and so far I have not encountered any that contain errors. The book is well-illustrated, although at a cost of over $90, I take issue with the lack of color. This is a topic related to cartography after all, and color matters.

I highly recommend this book to people who want to learn how to use GRASS effectively, or to teachers who want to structure a GIS course around an open source application. There is enough GIS theory presented to teach an intro-to-mid-level course on GIS. GRASS gets a bad rap from many in the GIS profession, and this book should allow most people to get over the initial humps and get started with it in an effective way. Hats off to Neteler and Mitasova.

The book covers many subjects broadly, from Remote Sensing, LIDAR as well as scanning historial maps. However, I found myself using the online users manual for the basics and step by step detail on HOW to use GRASS.

In addition, the binding of the book broke within 6 months, and about 25 pages fell out of the spine, with average use.

As some of the other reviews here indicate, it's not that easy for a novice to get started using GRASS. I had trouble installing GRASS on my ubuntu machine; then I had a hard time getting the GUI to do anything. Once I got the book, and began using the command-line interface rather than the GUI, it went very smoothly. The book is expensive, but when I figure that the book probably saved me a couple of weeks of frustration, I think it was worth the price. For those who haven't looked at it yet, GRASS is very impressive; the tie-ins with R make this the obvious GIS choice for anyone focusing on spatial statistics.

Let me begin by saying I have only had this book for about a week, thus I have not read it a half a dozen or so times yet and fully digested it. That being said, I would like to focus on the three topics that cause me to rate this book as a 2 on a scale of 1 to 5 - the writing, the illustration and the publishing.

Looking through the table of contents for Neteler's and Mitasova's book it is obvious that this was a fairly ambitious project, however a review of the text reveals that many of the topics are glossed over with rather rudimentary coverage. Nevertheless, strictly based on the writing I would have rated this book a 4 on a 1 to 5 scale. There are too many typos to give it a 5. As far as the illustrations I would rate this book somewhere between 0 and 0.5. For crying out loud it is a GIS book that covers such topics as `displaying raster data and assigning a color table', `image processing', `managing channels and colors', `introduction to RGB and HIS color model' and `spectrum and remote sensing' AND THERE IS NOT ONE COLOR PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION IN THE WHOLE DANG BOOK! Many of the illustrations, graphics and photos that do appear in this book are of very poor quality and resolution and not well thought out! GIS and cartography people are very visually oriented, apparently the authors ignored their audience and Springer Publishing just did not care!

As for the publishing of this tome I am VERY DISAPPOINTED with Springer Science + Business Media, LLC - the list price on this book iS $109 and it is VERY CHEAPLY MADE - the binding is shoddy, so much so, that I have my doubts that it will handle the 5 or 6 readings need to fully understand this book. As I previously mention the text contains typos and is poorly illustrated, this all reflects very badly on the publisher. The dissemination of well-appointed scientific knowledge does not appear to be one of Springer's priorities.

I must admit I am rather new to the OS world, and please do not think I have forgotten that open source software is free, but this book feels like being back in the proprietary world - where producing a top-quality product takes a distant backseat to the typical corner cutting methodologies and the pursuit of the all mighty dollar.

Yes I can see where you might be thinking this review is a bit melodramatic, and to that I would say this - $100 MAY NOT BE A LOT FOR YOU TO SPEND ON A BOOK, BUT IT IS FOR ME, I HAD TO BUDGET AND SAVE TO BUY THIS BOOK!

As GIS continues to grow in many usages, it was inevitable that someone [actually a bunch of blokes] would consider an open source GIS package. The book describes one, GRASS; and specifically version 5.3. It offers many visualisation conveniences of the prioprietary packages. Very easy and intuitive usages.

GRASS also relieves some of the burden of designing a GIS database that the visualisation draws upon. Though you be aware that the emphasis is on the latter.

The book does raise the issue of what is needed for you to use a prioprietary package, in lieu of GRASS. Especially if the "entry level" capabilities of the current GRASS are enough for your needs.

This is the most exciting GIS book I have picked up. Invaluable to the GIS professional. Documentation available online does not replace the material in this book.

The book is exactly as I was expecting, it bring s an interesting and objective introduction of GIS concept and its components, and then stars to explore the resources available in the software. All with interactive examples and additional material, that can be found over the internet links available in the book. The functional structure of GRASS is well explained and the possibilities are introduced in a hierarchical a constructive way. Raster and vector data will be dominated easily, besides other capabilities through interaction with other GNU GLP softwares like R.