Bing Maps is a geographic information and location intelligence solution, that when integrated as a data visualization dashboard for Microsoft Power BI, Excel, SharePoint and Dynamics software allows organizations to visualize multiple layers of business data on a map, such as sales, current customers and competitors. The ability to view data in this context reveals patterns and relationships, allowing businesses to better understand their opportunities and informs key business decisions at all…
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QGIS
Score 8.7 out of 10
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QGIS (formerly Quantum GIS) is a free and open source geographic information system.
Bing Maps is well suited for preplanning loads, specifically in regards to checking the bird's eye and aerial view to see if the facility has enough area or room for overnight parking. And if overnight parking is available, what number of restaurants are within walking distance from the business in the area.
Styling: the styling engine is fantastic with raster styling features that I recognize from apps like Photoshop.
Print layouts: I can set up custom print layouts, and even do automated multi-page atlas style reports that I use for cycling through detailed areas when providing my clients with pdf reports.
Extendable: the plugins are fantastic, and almost anything I need that isn't provided natively with QGIS is available as a plugin.
Community: the QGIS community is passionate about GIS, and are always ready to help. There are great training resources available online.
Making maps in QGIS is a bit clunky. I also find it to be extremely unintuitive. For basic GIS, it is great, but I would much rather make maps (for publication purposes) in ArcGIS.
Editing and adding feature layers is not very intuitive. Changing colors of added point or line features is a rather convoluted process.
ArcGIS has a huge selection of online courses, and if you have the appropriate license, you can access most for free. I found these to be very helpful when dealing with map projections and other issues. However, QGIS does not have a large library of courses specifically made for that program.
I wasn't a GIS user at all when I started using QGIS, nor did I have any background working with data in anything other than Excel, and as a result, I struggled quite a lot in the beginning (it's not quite Google Maps). But having said that, I haven't come across anything that I couldn't do with a little help from the online community. I've done complex spatial analyses on large datasets of metropolitan cities, designed custom multi-page pdf reports that automatically cycle through different areas of an area, etc.
And the GIS staff that I've appointed, after their initial resistance, took to the tool like a fish to water, and I haven't heard them complain after starting to use the tool for a week or two.
But if you're new to GIS, be patient and invest some time to learn how to use the tool. It is absolutely worth it.
Even though there is a no dedicated support team for QGIS (or at least we are not aware of it), there is a huge online community and a large number of forums catering to every question you may have regarding any particular functionality of QGIS. So, you have a lot of help available but you will have to sift through it on the web.
Home Depot and Lowes are both in the same category and offer great products and services but each have something a little different the other doesn't offer or have. Likewise, Bing Maps is in the same category as Google Maps but offers a little something slightly different in the features.
QGIS is open source and freely available for Windows and Mac iOS Geographic Information System Software. QGIS is highly customizable as per project requirements and different application usage. QGIS has ample tools and plugins that are useful for the analysis of raster and vector data. It also supports GRASS, GDAL, and SAGA tools.
QGIS gives us more impactful data on children and maternal health issues, which in turn has helped us establish more programs, relationships, and funding opportunities because of the excellent data presentations we can give.
QGIS has allowed our staff to improve their data analysis skills, improving our workforce across the board, with or without the direct use of geographic data.
QGIS has required a lot of staff time to learn, but the ROI on time spent vs the reports we produced afterward has been well worth it.
