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About SPRING GIS
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on Monday May 05, @06:38AM
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from the seasons-of-free-GIS dept.
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from the seasons-of-free-GIS dept.
Gilberto Camara writes "This post includes some information about the SPRING GIS and Image Processing software, which is available for free at http://www.dpi.inpe.br/spring/english/index.html 1. What is SPRING? SPRING is GIS and remote sensing image processing system with an object-oriented data model which provides for the integration of raster and vector data representations in a single environment. SPRING is freely available on the Internet. It has Windows and Linux versions. SPRING provides a comprehensive set of functions, including tools for Satellite Image Processing, Digital Terrain Modeling, Spatial Analysis, Geostatistics, Spatial Statistics, Spatial Databases and Map Management." Read the rest of Gilberto's SPRING GIS summary below. Gilberto is the General Director of the brazilian National Institute for Space Research. Gilberto also explains why SPRING is free but not open source on AGISRS.
"2. Who develops and maintains the product?
SPRING is a product of Brazil's National Institute for Space Research(INPE), who is developing it since 1992. SPRING has required over 200 man/years of development and includes extensive documentation, tutorials and examples. More than 80,000 users from 60 countries have downloaded the software, as of January 2008. Since 2003, INPE has contracted K2-Sistemas, a Brazilian software house, to support us in the maintenance of the product.
3. What are the strong points of SPRING?
That is obviously a hard question for us to answer. Users seems to like to segmentation and region classification, the integrated vector-raster interface and visualization, and image processing, geostatistical the spatial analytical capabilities. SPRING´s segmentation was judged to be the second-best after e-cognition for high-resolution data (see the paper by Meinel and Neubert, (http://www.isprs.org/istanbul2004/comm4/papers/50 6.pdf).
4. What are the weak points of SPRING?
I personally consider that there are better solutions than SPRING for the display of vector data. If you want an ArcView, we suggest TerraView, which is an OSS developed by INPE whose strong point is such functionality. In fact, many people in Brazil use SPRING for image and raster data processing, and TerraView for vector data visualization.
5. What is the future of SPRING?
SPRING is an institutional product. INPE will continue to maintain and improve the software for the foreseeable future. Right now, we are working on SPRING 5.0, which has a much better interface.
6. Why is SPRING not an open source software, but only a gratis software?
SPRING is a very large software product, with hundreds of functions, and 500.000+ lines of C++ code, produced over a period of a decade, by a large team (more than 200 man-years, at my last count). The project did not begin as a free software effort, but rather as an integrated GIS+IP freeware product for the Brazilian and Latin American users. Making SPRING available as open source on the web would require a major effort by our team in terms of documentation, and further effort in terms of supporting fellow code developers. These commitments are outside of our current capacity. We have given priority to supporting users of SPRING, producing enhanced versions, correcting bugs, generating user documentation, preparing training courses and maintaining the same code running on Windows and Linux
Best Regards
Gilberto Camara
General Director, National Institute for Space Research
Brazil"
SPRING is a product of Brazil's National Institute for Space Research(INPE), who is developing it since 1992. SPRING has required over 200 man/years of development and includes extensive documentation, tutorials and examples. More than 80,000 users from 60 countries have downloaded the software, as of January 2008. Since 2003, INPE has contracted K2-Sistemas, a Brazilian software house, to support us in the maintenance of the product.
3. What are the strong points of SPRING?
That is obviously a hard question for us to answer. Users seems to like to segmentation and region classification, the integrated vector-raster interface and visualization, and image processing, geostatistical the spatial analytical capabilities. SPRING´s segmentation was judged to be the second-best after e-cognition for high-resolution data (see the paper by Meinel and Neubert, (http://www.isprs.org/istanbul2004/comm4/papers/50 6.pdf).
4. What are the weak points of SPRING?
I personally consider that there are better solutions than SPRING for the display of vector data. If you want an ArcView, we suggest TerraView, which is an OSS developed by INPE whose strong point is such functionality. In fact, many people in Brazil use SPRING for image and raster data processing, and TerraView for vector data visualization.
5. What is the future of SPRING?
SPRING is an institutional product. INPE will continue to maintain and improve the software for the foreseeable future. Right now, we are working on SPRING 5.0, which has a much better interface.
6. Why is SPRING not an open source software, but only a gratis software?
SPRING is a very large software product, with hundreds of functions, and 500.000+ lines of C++ code, produced over a period of a decade, by a large team (more than 200 man-years, at my last count). The project did not begin as a free software effort, but rather as an integrated GIS+IP freeware product for the Brazilian and Latin American users. Making SPRING available as open source on the web would require a major effort by our team in terms of documentation, and further effort in terms of supporting fellow code developers. These commitments are outside of our current capacity. We have given priority to supporting users of SPRING, producing enhanced versions, correcting bugs, generating user documentation, preparing training courses and maintaining the same code running on Windows and Linux
Best Regards
Gilberto Camara
General Director, National Institute for Space Research
Brazil"
Related Stories
Bilko & MultiSpec: Remote Sensing Training Software
[+]
The AGISRS list has an interesting thread on remote sensing software used for basic RS training. In the discussion, UNESCO's Bilko and Purdue's MultiSpec were on the spot. From Bilko's page: "Bilko is a complete system for learning and teaching remote sensing image analysis skills. Current lessons teach the application of remote sensing to oceanography and coastal management, but Bilko routines may be applied to the analysis of any image in an appropriate format, and include a wide range of standard image processing functions."
From MultiSpec's page: "It results from an on-going multiyear research effort which is intended to define robust and fundamentally based technology for analyzing multispectral and hyperspectral image data, and to transfer this technology to the user community in as rapid a manner as possible."
gvSIG and Sextante, ILWIS and SPRING were also mentioned, there are other free and open source remote sensing software, such as GRASS GIS, OSSIM and RAT, but they're not focused training newcomers.
Our Education topic will reveal a few other tools for the classroom.
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