GEOSPATIAL MODELLING ENVIRONMENT - Spatial …

1 GEOSPATIALMODELLINGENVIRONMENTV ersion: L. BEYERDon t miss:1. The page-linked keyword index at the Section : Automation and batch The Hawthstools to GME conversion table in the The page-linked Table of Contents at the NOTICEThis is a beta version of the new GEOSPATIAL MODELLING ENVIRONMENT , the next generation ofHawthsTools. All of the commands listed in this document have been tested to the Beta 2 level: that means they have passed a basic level of testing and consistency checks. However,it is highly recommended that you inspect the output from these commands carefully toensure it is logical and consistent with your do report any bugs you encounter! Ideally your email will include a zipped sampleof data that I can use to replicate the problem. At the very least please copy and paste theentire contents of any error messages received. My email is: for your help in identifying INTRODUCING THE GEOSPATIAL MODELLING .. philosphy.

2 62 HOW TO USE and tips for using this interface .. with geodatabases .. and batch processing .. definition files .. statistical and empirical distributions .. GME with Python (and ArcToolbox tools) .. 173 COMMAND Commands .. clipraster .. cliprasterbypolys .. contour .. copyfeaturedataset .. countpntsinpolys .. deletefeatures .. delimiter .. download .. extractedge .. for .. gencirclesinpolys .. gencondrandompnts .. generalizeregions .. genhexagonsinpolys .. genmcp .. genpointinpoly .. genrandompnts .. genregionsampleplots .. genregularpntsinpolys .. genshapes .. genstratrandompnts .. genvecgrid .. isectfeatures .. isectlinerst .. isectpntpoly .. isectpntrst .. isectpolypoly .. isectpolyrst .. isopleth .. julian.

3 Kde .. kmeans .. licensestatus .. lineofsight2d .. listintersectingfeatures .. ls .. mergesampleplots .. neighbourhoodstatistics .. paste .. pointdistances .. r .. reclassify .. reclassifyrecords .. regiongroup .. run .. sampleperppointsalonglines .. save .. setparameter .. setspatialreference .. setwd .. shiftrotate .. simplify .. snappoints .. splitdataset .. sumlinelengthsinpolys .. system .. timer .. uniquevalues .. 1444 Spatial ANALYSIS AND MODELLING binary and weighted polygon adjecency matrices based on sharedborders .. 1465 colours in R .. command reference .. User License Agreement .. 15351 INTRODUCING THE GEOSPATIAL OverviewThe promise of GIS has always been that it would allow us to obtainbetteranswers to ourquestions. But this is only possible if we have tools that allows us to perform rigorous quan-titative analyses designed for Spatial data.

4 The GEOSPATIAL MODELLING ENVIRONMENT (GME)is a platform designed to help to facilitate rigorous Spatial analysis and provides you with a suite of analysis and MODELLING tools, ranging from small building blocks that you can use to construct a sophisticated work-flow, to completely self-contained analysis programs. It also uses the extraordinarily powerful open source softwareR as the statistical engine to drive some of the analysis tools. One of the many strengths ofR is that it is open source, completely transparent and well documented: important charac-teristics for any scientific analytical incorporates most of the functionality of its predecessor, HawthsTools, but withsome important improvements. It has a greater range of analysis and MODELLING tools, sup-ports batch processing, offers new graphing functionality, automatically records work-flowsfor future reference, supports geodatabases, and can be called is under active development and I am always grateful for suggestions about how toimprove the software, or recommendations of new tools to add.

5 Thank you in advance foryour feedback (email: you find this software useful, please consider providing financial support for this Design philosphyA number of years ago I published a free extension (HawthsTools) that contained a somewhateclectic collection of tools designed to facilitate certain Spatial analysis and MODELLING I received a great deal of positive feedback on the tools (thanks to all of you whoprovided feedback) there were a number of fundamental limitations with the design of thissoftware: it could not be automated, it took too long to develop and maintain tools, the toolscould not be chained together very effectively, it was time consuming to support, next generation of these tools (the GEOSPATIAL MODELLING ENVIRONMENT ) resolves manyof the limitations in the original implementation and adds greatly enhanced new I outline the driving motivations in the design philosophy of the new tools:1. Rigorous statistical use the open source and extraordinarily powerfulstatistical software R to drive statistical analyses in ESRI ArcMap.)

6 I have long felt thatthe analytical capabilities of GIS software have been grossly inadequate. The promise ofGIS has always been that it will allow us to obtain better answers to our questions, butthis is facilitated by the analytical capabilities of the software. While much effort has beeninvested in the more graphical and technical aspects of GIS (displaying data, map making,data storage, movie making, etc), the analytical capabilities have been relatively use R to begin to facilitate rigorous statistical analysis in a GIS ENVIRONMENT . I have also6developed tools to facilitate stochastic simulations, bootstrapping and randomization testingusing Spatial data. I feel these are underutilized but key tools for Spatial order to be useful for the widest possible range of applicationsI provide simple methods of automating the running of these tools. The new interface isentirely command line driven. This allows users to string together tools/commands as partof a larger work-flow.

7 I also provide simple programming structures ( a loop)to further automate repetitious work-flows. The command line interface also provides astraightforward method for calling these tools from other applications. There is thereforemuch more scope for interoperability and automation in this new version of the new design makes it quicker and easier to add new tools, whichbenefits both the developer and the user. It also facilitates the addition of much moresophisticated (higher order) tools, and makes it easier to maintain code each time a newversion of ArcGIS is released. As a developer I want to spend less time maintaining code andmore time adding new are extremely useful tools for exploring data and conceptualisingrelationships in data. I use R to provide graphing functions in ArcGIS (scatterplots, boxplots,histograms, etc).5. Recording a scientific applications it is important to maintain arecord of the steps in a work-flow so that the analysis can be appropriately described andrepeated if necessary.

8 The GME automatically records every command that is run and theresult of that command as an HTML file so users do not have to spend time recording theirwork-flow Interface this interface the output window is a web browser. Thismeans that it can accommodate many types of graphical output (text, pictures, movies,dynamic HTML, etc), it can be subsequently viewed without using special software (just aweb browser), it allows me to colour code output, and it makes it easy for users to adjust( making the text larger for those of us with fading eyesight).Starting in GME version you can run tools using a graphical user interface or thecommand line interface. The GUI can also be uesd to build commands that you then runusing the command line interface. The GUI is convenient for running one-off commands,but for developing workflows that you may need to repeat I recommend the command lineinterface, which makes it straightforward to re-run a complex work-flow.

9 Furthermore, oncea command string is created it is easy to modify it and rerun the command (as opposed toGUI forms where you have to reset all the options again).72 HOW TO USE Instructions and tips for using this interfaceGME command can be run using either a graphical user interface (GUI) or a command lineinterface. It is also possible to use the GUI interface to build commands, and then run themusing the command line 1: The GME interface. (1) Select a command from the list, and completethe form that is displayed to run the command (see next figure for an example).(2) Search for commands using a keyword or filtering the commands by category.(3) Alternatively, run commands from the command line using the Command Texttab. (4) Either way, when you run a command, processing results are displayedin the Output window, which is displayed automatically. (5) Use the red buttonif you wish to cancel are a variety of resources to help you to find and specify commands:1.

10 The search box on the left side of GME: type a keyword ( random) or even a fewkey letters ( gen) to see the commands that contain this word in the commandname, title or Use the command category filter on the left side of GME: this filters the command listto show only the commands that are members of that category. This works inconjunction with the search tool, so set the category filter back to No filter if youwish to see/search all commands again. Many commands are members of more thanone Search the full help documentation (either the website or the PDF) using standardsearch tools in your web browser or PDF viewer. The Commands page on the website is particularly useful for the command line interface it is highly recommended you use a text editor likeNotepad++ to keep a record of your commands. You fill often find it convenient to copy8 Figure 2: (6) Use the form to specify the parameters for the command you haveselected. You do not need to specify values for optional parameters unless youwish to.