titlegrassgisamulti-purposeopensourcegis.docVIP

Title: GRASS GIS: a multi-purpose Open Source GIS Authors: Markus Neteler1, M. Hamish Bowman2, Martin Landa3, and Markus Metz4 1Biodiversity and Molecular Ecology Department, IASMA Research and Innovation Centre, Fondazione Edmund Mach, Via E.?Mach?1, 38010 S.?Michele allAdige (TN), Italy. Tel: +39 0461 615570, Fax: +39 0461 650956, email: eler@iasma.it 2Department of Marine Science, University of Otago, P.O. Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand, email: hamish.bowman@otago.ac.nz 3Department of Mapping and Cartography, Faculty of Civil Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague, Thakurova 7, 166 29 Prague, Czech Republic, email: martin.landa@fsv.cvut.cz 4Biodiversity and Molecular Ecology Department, IASMA Research and Innovation Centre, Fondazione Edmund Mach, Via E.?Mach?1, 38010 S.?Michele allAdige (TN), Italy. Tel: +39 0461 615570, Fax: +39 0461 650956, email: markus.metz@iasma.it Corresponding author: Markus Neteler, Biodiversity and Molecular Ecology Department, IASMA Research and Innovation Centre, Fondazione Edmund Mach, Via E.?Mach?1, 38010 S.?Michele allAdige (TN), Italy. Tel: +39 0461 615570, Fax: +39 0461 650956, email: eler@iasma.it Software availability GRASS GIS software: Free under the GNU GPL license and can be obtained from / Operating System requirements: MS-Windows XP or newer, MacOS X 10.4.10 or newer, recent GNU/Linux or a UNIX variant Abstract The GIS software sector has developed rapidly over the last ten years. Open Source GIS applications are gaining relevant market shares in academia, business, and public administration. In this paper, we illustrate the history and features of a key Open Source GIS, the Geographical Resources Analysis Support System (GRASS). GRASS has been under development for more than 28 years, has strong ties into academia, and its review mechanisms led to the integration of well tested and documented algorithms into a joint GIS suite which has been used regularly for environmental modelling. The development is comm