Creating Thematic Maps Using the Cartographic Composer in GRASS GIS

Introduction

The purpose of this tutorial is to introduce the Cartographic Composer in GRASS GIS and use the Cartographic Composer to create 2 thematic maps. The maps will then be recreated in QGIS to determine differences in the visual aspects of the final map products. The data used for this tutorial is open data, which is available from the City of Ottawa and Scholars GeoPortal.

Link to Open Ottawa data: https://open.ottawa.ca/

Link to Scholars GeoPortal: http://geo2.scholarsportal.info/

Link to GRASS GIS website, where you can download the program for all three operating systems: https://grass.osgeo.org/download/

Link to QGIS website, where you can download the program for all three operating systems: https://qgis.org/en/site/forusers/download.html

GRASS GIS and QGIS are both available for Windows, Linux and MacOS. This tutorial will be performed using a Windows machine.

Obtaining the Data=

The data that will be used during this tutorial is a base layer of the City of Ottawa from Scholars GeoPortal and two datasets from Open Ottawa: Red Light Camera Violations 2016 and Red Light Camera Violations 2019. Any open data from the City of Ottawa can be used during this tutorial but this is the specific data that will be used for the purpose of the tutorial.