If everything happens somewhere then geographical information systems (GIS) have to be one of the best tools available historic environment professionals. Our practical, hands-on course will get you set up with all the basics so that you can use QGIS for your work or research. Designed by historic environment professionals with over a decade of experience in a variety of GIS applications, this course covers essential concepts needed to understand and use QGIS.
This online course is approved CPD by the Chartered Institute for Archaeologists and has been developed from our popular 1-day course in which we have been successfully guiding participants from across the spectrum of interested community member to heritage professionals to get competent with QGIS since 2015.
Through theory modules and easy to follow workshops we will cover the following topics:
- Setting up your GIS project
- Sourcing and importing different types of spatial data
- Georeferencing images
- Digitising features to a shapefile
- Styles and labelling
- Saving and printing maps for publication
- Finding help and further resources
There are many GIS platforms to choose from but we think that Quantum GIS is the best tool around for desk-based research. It is user-friendly, lightweight but powerful and best of all there’s no hefty price-tag as QGIS is absolutely free!
| Course Aim | To improve knowledge and understanding of the use of QGIS for collating and displaying spatial data relating to the historic environment |
| Duration | c.12 hours |
| Course Breakdown | 16 sections 4 practical workshops fortnightly zoom check-ins |
| Enrollment Schedule | Anytime |
Zoom Schedule
Before you get started…
If you haven’t already, you should take a look at our how it works page for a full introduction to our online offer and read through our terms of use. You may also want to see how this course provides skills and knowledge towards the National Occupational Standards for Archaeological Practice. If you have any questions please contact course leader Rebecca.
What will I Need?
You will need a computer with QGIS installed to complete this course. Your operating system can be Windows, Mac OS or linux but you will need at least 8GB RAM and 1GB memory. We recommend downloading the latest Long Term Support (LTS) version of QGIS. Click the button below for step by step .pdf instructions to download and install QGIS.
If you are working in the UK you may also need to add two additional OSGB transformation files to the QGIS install. These files can be downloaded as a .zip folder using the button below. Instructions for where to save these files on your system are included in the QGIS Install Instructions pdf.