The IBM Environmental Intelligence Suite is an AI-powered SaaS solution that provides intelligence to proactively manage the economic impact of severe weather and climate-change events built on weather data.
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QGIS
Score 9.7 out of 10
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QGIS (formerly Quantum GIS) is a free and open source geographic information system.
Given we are a larger accounting firm with clients in different geographical regions the tool was insightful but for smaller firms with a more robust business I'm not sure how useful the tool would be for those users. For our business the tool was specifically useful in the EMEA regions and how their climate impact differs from the US and the specific resourcing we need for it.
Presented meaningful charts and tables of our climate data in the 4 countries we operate and showed strengths and weaknesses across each market.
Formatted the presentation materials so our team did not have to take the reports and put them into a presentable format. We were able to leverage the technology's outputs in raw form which was very helpful and saved a lot of time.
Applied this to some of our client's data to see how we can better serve their business based off the different climates, environments, and countries they operate in (specifically within the real estate sector which is a large portion of our business).
QGIS is free and very easy to install, and no license is required. Not having to deal with licensing issues has saved me considerable time and frustration.
The QGIS help community is very active, and it is easy to find answers. Although QGIS does not offer support in the way that ArcMap does, I was always able to google my question and find either a tutorial or website that solved my problem.
QGIS seems to crash less often than ArcMap. It is super annoying to have a program crash when you are in the middle of a project, but I have not had any issues with QGIS. Also, QGIS is updated frequently.
QGIS is hard to use for beginners. A better tutorial and clearer online tutorials could improve this.
Labeling interface is overly complicated. Allowing users to manually add labels to relevant items could be helpful.
QGIS should have more "wizards" that can easily import common data points (median income, population density, etc) and cross tabulate that with other categories easily from uploaded data.
Given the newness of the platform we have struggled with the integration and onboarding as previously mentioned. Not only from getting our team members setup and able to use the platform but also integrating our current systems to be compatible we had to reach out to the customer support team quite a bit.
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.
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.
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.
We can ingest data in any format, and convert it to industry-standard spatial files for hosting on our online GIS platform.
Many client projects require us to analyze and understand data before we can report on it.
Because QGIS is free, and the learning curve is negligible for bright GIS technicians, the ROI is practically infinite because the investment is basically zero.
