Chapter 1. Handling Your Data

In this introductory chapter, we will prepare all the necessary tools and data for the visual exploration of spatial phenomena, mapping, and analysis. After getting to know some basics about QGIS as a desktop GIS, you will learn how to install and configure it. Then, we will go through the most common spatial data sources and, in the end, aggregate them into a single spatial database that will be used for styling, mapping, and analysis in the following chapters.

In this chapter, we will go through the following topics:

• QGIS installation
• Graphical user interface (GUI), its elements, and its customization
• Loading various types of spatial data from common sources
• Projection's basics
• Assembling data into a single spatial database