A Brief Overview of GRASS GIS

Knowing to A Brief Overview of GRASS GIS

Spatial analysis is the process of generating or creating information about a geographical area for the purpose of analysis, evaluation or modeling. Spatial analysis data is used by various organizations and companies that require terrain data, geographical information, among others.GRASS GIS

Looking for GRASS GIS

To be able to gather accurate spatial analysis data, a special software is used, which is known as a geographical information system (GIS).

There are several GIS software available in the market, but when cost becomes an issue in the company or organization, downloading a free software would be the alternative. Care must be taken, however, since not all free software is stable or support is not guaranteed.

Among the different free GIS software, a highly supported and more stable product is GRASS (Geographic Resources Analysis Support System).

Brief History of GRASS GIS

GRASS was developed by the US Military, under the U.S. Army-Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (USA-CERL), located at Champagne, Illinois. In 1982, USA-CERL started the development of the software for use in land management and planning. The GIS software was developed using a UNIX/VAX system. In 1991, GRASS version 4.0 was released in the internet for free, which allows other organizations, companies or universities to have their own copy, thus making the software popular. By 1995, version 4.1.5 was released with portability with Linux systems, making the software available to run in multiple hardware platforms.



In 1996, USA-CERL ceased its development and support for the software was transferred to Baylor University. The following year, GRASS 4.2 was released. By 1998, Markus Neteler, from Germany, became the project lead and made major changes to the software. When GRASS 5.0 was released in 1999, its license was under GNU GPL (GNU General Public License), which makes it an official open-source, free licensed software.


GRASS Current Release and Major Enhancements


Along the years of its development, the GRASS GIS software has evolved into a flexible system that can be used in any type of application, from GPS to cartography, weather systems to land terrain mapping. Currently, it has around 400 built-in modules and numerous add-on modules developed by multiple development communities, is available in twenty languages and accepts a wide array of data formats (2D/3D raster data, vector data, satellite images).



The current version released is GRASS 6.4 (September 3, 2010), although a version 7.0 is now under development stage. From the GRASS Development Team announcement on February 19, 2012 (grass.osgeo.org), the release of GRASS version 6.4.2 has the following enhancements:

- updates on the new wxPython Graphical User Interface

- stable support for Microsoft Windows

- GUI cartographic composer tool

- GUI object-oriented modeling environment

- major improvement in the infrastructure for the installation and management of add-on modules developed by other software communities



For more information about GRASS or to download a copy, just go to grass.osgeo.org. GRASS GIS