Beginner's Tutorial to GRASS GIS in Python

Introduction & Purpose

Throughout my brief years of study at Carleton University in the Geomatics discipline, I have noticed a shift towards a more ‘user-friendly’ focus in developing GIS tools. A great example of this initiative is the recent updates done to GRASS GIS with GRASS GIS83 improving the user GUI exceptionally with a single panel housing all the tools rather than many separate windows.

This apparent shift away from the traditional coding roots of GIS to a GUI dominant interface comes with upsides, downsides as well as an entirely new range of audience members. The focus of this tutorial is to explore the simple use of Python scripts written in Python 83 (8.3.10) using an open source IDE, in GRASS GIS83 using the pre-installed grass.script package in GRASS. The tutorial will consist of a few simple analyses using data from a few sources such as Open Ottawa and Ontario Geohub to demonstrate the capabilities of using GRASS with script rather than individual tools and the time it saves a user, especially when completing repetitive tasks.

From my personal experience the hardest part to kick-start your GIS coding experience is finding the resources and knowing where to start. This tutorial aims to fill the gaps in knowledge of a beginner GIS user looking to use code in GIS through a user friendly method available in GRASS. Therefore, the audience to this tutorial is marketed at beginner users that know the basic working principles of GIS, and are looking for a taste of scripting in there analysis process.