Exercise 5: The world

Characteristics of the exercise

Aim of the exercise:

This exercise will help you to get to know the interface of QGIS a bit better. Furthermore, you will load your first data in QGIS and gain some hands-on experience with the layer concept and learn how to reproject layers.

Type of trainings exercise:

• This exercise can be used in online and presence training.

• It can be done as a follow-along exercise or individually as a self-study.

Competences covered in this exercise:

• Creating and saving a new QGIS project

• Importing vector data (.shp and .gpkg) as well as tabular data (.txt)

• Understanding the layer concept

• Navigating the QGIS interface and map canvas

Estimated time demand for the exercise

• The exercise takes around 30 minutes to complete, depending on the number of participants and trainers.

Relevant Wiki Articles

• QGIS Interface

• Types of Geodata

• Geodata Import in QGIS

• Layer Concept

Instructions for the trainers

Trainers Corner

Prepare the training

• Take the time to familiarise yourself with the exercise and the provided material.

• Prepare a white-board. It can be either a physical whiteboard, a flip-chart, or a digital whiteboard (e.g. Miro board) where the participants can add their findings and questions.

• Before starting the exercise, make sure everybody has installed QGIS and has downloaded and unzipped the data folder.

• Check out How to do trainings? for some general tips on training conduction

Conduct the training

Introduction:

• Introduce the idea and aim of the exercise.

• Provide the download link and make sure everybody has unzipped the folder before beginning the tasks.

Follow-along:

• Show and explain each step yourself at least twice and slow enough so everybody can see what you are doing, and follow along in their own QGIS-project.

• Make sure that everybody is following along and doing the steps themselves by periodically asking if anybody needs help or if everybody is still following.

• Be open and patient to every question or problem that might come up. Your participants are essentially multitasking by paying attention to your instructions and orienting themselves in their own QGIS-project.

Wrap up:

• Leave time for any issues or questions concerning the tasks at the end of the exercise.

• Leave some time for open questions.

Available Data

Download all datasets here, save the folder on your computer and unzip the file.

The folder is called “Module_2_Exercise_5_The_World” and contains the whole standard folder structure with all data in the input folder and the additional documentation in the documentation folder.

• World Countries (Generalized) (Polygon/Shapefile)

• Significant Earthquake Dataset (CSV)

• Global Power Plant Dataset (Points/GeoPackage)

Tasks

Tip

Make sure to unzip the exercise folder before beginning the tasks. Otherwise, you will not be able to import the datasets into QGIS.

1. Open QGIS and create a new project by clicking on Project -> New

2. Once the project is created save the project in the /Project-subfolder in the /Module_2_Exercise_5_The_World/. In the top bar, click on Project -> Save as and navigate to the folder. Name the project “Module_2_Ex_5_The_World”.

3. Load the shape file World_countries_generalized.shp into your project by drag and drop (Wiki Video). Or click on Layer-> Add Layer-> Add Vector Layer. Click on the three points and navigate to “World_countries__generalized”. Select the file and click Open. Back in QGIS click Add (Wiki Video).

   Attention

   With both methods, you need to select the file with the ending .shp! A shapefile consists of several files that are referring to each other. The file that holds the geometry information is the file ending with .shp.

4. Load the GeoPackage file global_power_plant_database_nuclear.gpkg into the QGIS project. You can use one of the methods used in the previous step: Either drag and drop (Wiki Video) the file or click on Layer-> Add Layer-> Add Vector Layer. Click on the three points and navigate to /data/input/. Select the file and click Open. Back in QGIS click Add(Wiki Video).

   Note

   GeoPackage files can contain multiple files, and even whole QGIS projects. When you load such a file in QGIS, a window will appear in which you have to select the files you want to load in your QGIS project.

5. Next, we want to load the file Significant_earthquake_data.txt into QGIS. Since this is vector data in text format, we need to follow specific steps (Wiki Video).

   • Click on Layer-> Add Layer-> Add Delimited text Layer. Click on the three points and navigate to Significant_earthquake_data.txt in the data/input/-subfolder. Select the file and click Open.

   • In the window “Data Source manager| Delimited Text” in QGIS open the dropdown menu File Format and check Custom delimiter and Tab

   • Open the dropdown menu Geometry definition. Make sure the option Point coordinates is checked. Furthermore, select for X field “LONGITUDE” and for Y field “LATITUDE”.

   • Select the coordinate reference system (CRS) “EPSG:4326-WGS 84”.

   • Click Add.

   Note

   When loading vector data in text format like .csv or .txt in QGIS, these data has to have latitude and longitude columns.

   • X field =“LONGITUDE”

   • Y field = “LATITUDE”.

   

6. In the layer panel on the left, arrange the three layers in a practical order. Remember the Layer Concept. The countries-layer should sit below the earthquake and power plant layers.

Tip

You can also move the map by clicking on the map canvas and holding Space. This will automatically activate the hand-tool while pressing the space bar. Scrolling with your mouse(pad) also lets you zoom in and out in the map canvas. Holding Ctrl on windows, or Cmd on MacOS, allows you to zoom in smaller steps.

7. Interact with the map and explore the data sets. Use the zoom tool and move the map. Where can you find a lot of earthquakes and where are most of the power plants located?

Tip

If you see * before the name of your project on the top left corner of QGIS this means there are unsaved changes in your project. Save your progress!

8. Save your project by clicking on the or use the hotkey combination Ctrl + S.

9. Your results should look something like this: