QGIS (formerly Quantum GIS) is a free and open source geographic information system.
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RS2
Score8 out of 10
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Rocscience offers RS2, an engineering application for the oil and gas industries that build models of rock and soil, steady-state finite element groundwater seepage analysis, and other analyses.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
RS2 is well suited if you are looking for a system that allows you to control and monitor access to your buildings to keep them secure. It provides good visibility of the current status of doors and also allows you to set alarms to notify you of various events. RS2 also gives you the flexibility to set local administrators that only control doors at their location.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
RS2 gives you a good view of the current status of your doors from the RS2 Access It! application.
It allows you to assign permissions to admin users, so you can restrict them to only seeing the doors at their location. You can also restrict the modules they see and whether they can view, edit, and delete.
The system allows you to schedule door activities through timezones (i.e., set door x to unlocked from 8:00 am until 8:15 am Monday through Friday) to automate door activities.
The Event Listing report is configurable and allows you to see an individual user, groups of users, a single door, groups of doors, a specific flag (i.e., access granted, access denied, timezone activated, etc).
You can program macros to set ad hoc door activities.
The system allows you to import a building map marking all of the doors with access readers. You can also carry out ad hoc activities from the access readers on the map (i.e., set door to unlocked for x minutes, set door to unlocked until x o'clock, etc).
It has flexible inputs that we integrate with other notification systems for doing lock down from a panic button, so all doors lock when the button is activated.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
The reporting is somewhat customizable, but not easy to work with. Most of the pre-packaged reports have been useless to us.
One of the biggest drawbacks is that the schedule does not use a calendar, so if you set and automated event for Monday through Friday, it is every Monday through Friday. There is a way to set a holiday to prevent an automated schedule from running on a certain day, but it is not easy to work with. A calendar view with exceptions would be much better.
On rare occasion, if one of the controllers has their network connection briefly disrupted, they do not come back online until we power cycle the controller. The doors still maintain their security, but you cannot make any changes or updates until you power cycle.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
Their annual support renewal is very high compared to others and they will not provide any support without the contract. We tend to work through our re-seller for support. They are trained, but still need to contact RS2 support for some issues and even if they open a support case, RS2 will not talk directly with us. They have been able to resolve most issues, but still have not determined why certain controllers do not recover if there is a network disruption.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
We compared RS2 to the Hirsh Identiv Velocity system. The Velocity system did not allow us to schedule door access easily and was difficult to integrate with other systems. The Velocity management interface was cumbersome and did not allow us the flexibility of scripting door settings. With Velocity it was not easy to monitor or make changes to door status.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
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.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
It is hard to measure ROI because an access security system does not generate any revenue. It was implemented to secure our buildings and help protect students and staff.
It has positively impacted our business from a safety standpoint. It allows us to secure our buildings.
RS2 also integrates well with other systems to allow us to lock down our buildings in the event of a severe external threat.
A de minimis incentive was given to thank the reviewer for their time. The incentive was not used to bias or drive a particular response, nor was the incentive contingent on a positive endorsement. More Info
