How I Would Learn GIS (If I Had To Start Over)

🛳️ Work with me 1-on-1 on MentorCruise ➡️ mentors.to/mattforrest ⬅️
📖 My Spatial SQL book is out now! ➡️ spatial-sql.com/ ⬅️
🎓 Top GIS courses on Coursera! ➡️ imp.i384100.net/NkVA6V ⬅️
If I had to learn GIS from scratch, this is the way I would do it. Learning GIS, especially a modern GIS approach, can seem overwhelming, but this video explains how to take a four-step process to learn modern GIS and some tools to help you get started!
0:00 Intro
1:12 Using spatial relationships
4:30 Geospatial data engineering with GDAL
7:03 Spatial indicies
8:20 Step 1 - QGIS
10:33 Step 2 - Python
15:30 Step 3 - Spatial SQL
18:15 Step 4 - The Cloud
20:43 Other recommendations
Some of the resources from the video and others to get started:
GDAL: gdal.org/
Leafmap: leafmap.org/
PySAL: pysal.org/
Learn Spatial SQL: forrest.nyc/learn-spatial-sql/
40+ Resources for Spatial SQL: forrest.nyc/40-spatial-sql-re...
75+ Geospatial Python and Spatial Data Science Resources and Guides: forrest.nyc/75-geospatial-pyt...
JavaScript: Understanding the Weird Parts: www.udemy.com/course/understa...
Modern React with Redux: www.udemy.com/course/react-re...
A Brief History of Web Maps: forrest.nyc/a-brief-history-o...
Harvard CS 50: pll.harvard.edu/course/cs50-i...
#gis #sql #qgis #python
Other courses to get started with GIS, spatial data science, and data science (affiliate links):
Sign up for StrataScratch to practice real SQL and Python questions from top companies: stratascratch.com/?via=matthew
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Specialization from UC Davis: imp.i384100.net/n1Kyxo
Spatial Data Science and Applications from Yonsei University: imp.i384100.net/9W6E6W
Python for Everybody from University of Michigan: imp.i384100.net/BX3P31
Remote Sensing Image Acquisition, Analysis and Applications: imp.i384100.net/Xxe4Ay
Google Data Analytics Professional Certificate: imp.i384100.net/oeKO9b
IBM Data Science Professional Certificate: imp.i384100.net/n1KyK6
➕ Follow me on LinkedIn: / mbforr
🎙️Check out the Modern GIS episode on the MapScaping Podcast: mapscaping.com/podcast/what-i...
🗞️ Modern GIS Newsletter on LinkedIn: / the-guide-to-modern-gi...
🌐 My personal website: forrest.nyc
🚀 My top links and resources: forrest.nyc/links-and-guides-...

[@swyvl_]

What a great overview about all things modern GIS, thanks Matt!

[@BooneLovesVideo]

This is super helpful! Thank you so much, Matt.

[@MattForrest]

Thank you for the kind words!

[@Our__Earth]

Thanks Matt ! Clever way of beginning with all those geospatial terms and concepts!

[@MattForrest]

Thanks for the kind words!

The best content I've ever seen on gis. Thank you Matt

[@MattForrest]

That is greatly appreciated thanks Yunus!

[@adrianfeliperuedacastellan1705]

Absolugamente increíble! Videos como este hacen que la frustración por la gran cantidad de conocimiento que hay se reduzca un poco. Muchas gracias Matt por compartir este aporte tan valioso!

[@MattForrest]

Gracias Adrian!

[@davisoueuu]

it was very enlightening, man. thank you. a lot of points to go deep now

[@MattForrest]

Appreciate it!

[@wenkanglee9596]

I couldn't express how glad and grateful I am for this video. Thank you so much, Matt, for making content like this for the GIS enthusiasts out here.

[@MattForrest]

Thank you that means a lot!

[@evaadler8118]

Pure gem. So insightful! Thank you Matt for continuing to pave the way and share all your amazing knowledge and learnings in modern GIS. Learning so much❤

[@MattForrest]

🙌 Happy to help!

[@nicolasguardo3962]

Thanks for sharing your experience, this video is very useful and insightful!

[@MattForrest]

Thank you!

[@shreyanbasu9366]

Thank you so much Matt. It helped me a lot to understand the whole process

[@MattForrest]

Thanks!!

[@eguagie-suyiprecious9554]

This is really a great and insightful video. Thanks for this

[@MattForrest]

Of course glad it was helpful!

[@nataliagutierrez4924]

thank you so much for the information in this vide. I have been learning a little bit of everything as I need it for my job and this is going to structure the way I keep improving my gis skills. :)

[@MattForrest]

🙌

[@Omerkubur]

Am a survey engineering student and this helped me alot to understands GIS

[@DANNYEL20122]

Which school?

[@MattForrest]

💪 so glad to hear that Omer!

[@AndreThompson2000]

Amazing presentation. Thanks so much!

[@MattForrest]

Glad it was helpful!

[@mapmaker1154]

Great video, I have some Traditional GIS Background and I think I need to learn this pathway immediately. thanks

[@MattForrest]

Wow that’s great glad to hear that!

[@hazzah3104]

Thanks heaps Matt, I really appreciate the insight ❤

[@MattForrest]

Of course so glad it was helpful!

[@bc4198]

Your videos are just _SO_ good 🤯

[@MattForrest]

Thanks for the kind words and glad they are helpful!

[@skylercrawford5908]

This was great. Had to subscribe.

[@MattForrest]

Thank you appreciate it!

[@rahulkoley9447]

So informative, Awesome 🤗

[@MattForrest]

Awesome glad it helped!

[@orbistertius1336]

Gracias por destacar esta valiosa infotmación!

[@MattForrest]

De nada!

[@4dhima]

I am an undergraduate Geospatial student from In Indonesia. Thank you for making this video! It bright up my future career🎉

[@MattForrest]

Thank you so much that means a lot!

[@ikawaj]

very well put together

[@MattForrest]

Thanks!

[@art_ik]

I'm a software engineer mainly working in the web domain. I'm at the point in my career where I'm finding it very boring at my current job. While thinking about doing some side hustle I ended up thinking about making maps for clients like municipalities and companies because I love maps and cartography in general. Though, I love them very naively, I have never dabbled into what goes behind making maps and cartography I just love looking at maps and analyzing its features. While researching about how I can combine my knowledge as a software engineer and my hobby of maps and geography, I stumbled upon your channel and learned about GIS. I'm very intrigued by the field, I even took an introductory lecture on coursera just to test the waters. I think I will enjoy learning about GIS but I am not sure if that's what I am looking for. I want to design and illustrate maps as a side hustle so my question is, will learning GIS and ArcGIS specifically be worth my time or not? I know it is literally the tech behind maps but is GIS(and ArcGIS) a lot take if I just want to illustrate maps as side hustle? are there any other tech which is more suitable for my needs? Thank you so much. Appreciate the work you are doing.

[@djtall3090]

Sounds like you have the right motivation and skill set. With GIS Pro version you can combine mapping with base level programming. Give it a shot

[@nigoclassic911]

Salute from Uganda... Great video and gives a fine insight to modern GIS and am looking forward in learning geospatial phython. Any links to that shall be appreciated... Thanks Matts for that wonder's above in the videos

[@MattForrest]

👋🇺🇬 much appreciated! Check out my other video on geospatial Python!

[@StefanoVerugi]

Thanks for your video SQL easy approach could be with SQLite/Spatialite, it allows a quick start and no server needed, also available within QGIS, very powerful Another option is R that uses a similar framework with its SF package

[@MattForrest]

Definitely! Spatialite is such a small package and easy to stand up. I like PostGIS even though has a bigger footprint it has a lot more functions and extensions too.

[@rezabonakdar9318]

Thanks a lot for this useful video and sharing your experience. I am a computer engineer and I have been working with ArcGIS for several years. I think most of modern GIS tools that you described, are open source so I've decided to work in this field. I would be happy to know your opinion.

[@MattForrest]

Glad to hear that! As many others my education in university was all on Esri tools but I started using open source after I graduated in 2010. There is a ton of great content to learn but it isn’t always super easy to find. I think it is great to add more skills as well as languages that can help you in other fields too! That’s one of many big advantages of modern GIS!

[@achrafremach2522]

very good video thank you from Morocco

[@MattForrest]

🇲🇦👋 Awesome glad you enjoyed it!

[@mehdiben4186]

slm khuya ymkli nsewlek ?

[@mariarosales3535]

Hello Matt, thanks a lot for sharing this summary. I'm new to these GIS's field and I need to extract 'real' terrains profiles in .stl format (surface), please, which opensource would be most easy to learn for this purpose?

[@dwmedi21]

Nice!

[@MattForrest]

Thanks David!

[@aamirsuleman9815]

Awesome! Could you cover more on GIS front-end libraries. Google Maps JS API does not support COG or GeoParquet but offers the best basemaps. It is also behind on being developer-friendly for functionally like adding and removing or setting transparency on layers. What’s the best choice?

[@MattForrest]

So personally I like DeckGL but it requires some pretty deep JavaScript knowledge but it’s very performant and has many more styling options. Leaflet and OpenLayers also have good options but almost all front end libraries will render GeoJSON from files. Apart from that you will need to create tiles which can be done in a few different ways like QGIS and Tippecanoe.

[@jimamegersa3033]

great video

[@MattForrest]

Thank you!

[@TheExecuter94]

nice - but instead of yourself maybe show the relevant data and examples?

[@MattForrest]

Appreciate the feedback!

[@nomadhomad3685]

Excellent point. I was scratching my head and replaying bits throughout the video. Stock footage isn't helpful in a video like this.

[@thanos7229]

Do gou spell Forrest with SVG marker?

[@djtall3090]

You gave me war flashbacks in the first 3 seconds

[@cuatxe]

Any courses or books recommendations for beginners?

[@sunilverma1975]

Sir is it a skill (geospatial data engeenering) at booom or outdated. Is it offer some great package or jobs

[@RaymondPeckIII]

At 22:05 you mention a video of a full conference from the Open Geospatial Consortium, but I don't see a link to it anywhere, and searches came up empty. 😞

[@MattForrest]

Whoops! Here it is: kzbin.info/www/bejne/rGTIY4J6eLBsedE

[@sebagasca7263]

thanks for the video!. Do you know of any good course to learn qgis?

[@MattForrest]

QGIS has great tutorials on their website that I would check out!

[@kc3527]

Please recommend recourses from where I can learn these

[@MattForrest]

I have some videos talking about Python courses and check out my website forrest.nyc

[@saulcf3349]

What about Arcpy and PyQgis? Thanks in advance Sir

[@MattForrest]

Both are great tools to add some flexibility into automating those tools. You can do many of the same things with Python such as spatial joins but sometimes it helps to use those tools more complex built in analyses to speed things up.

[@zbiplop]

I have a bachelor in ES and doing MS. I want to learn GIS and pursue a career in this field. Any suggestion for me?❤

[@MattForrest]

Definitely! I would use your undergrad experience and use that as a base to use the tools. QGIS is an easy place to start with lots of great tutorials on their site. From there pick up some programming languages like SQL and Python, plus I would focus on some raster analysis for environmental analysis too.

[@shakyalu7502]

Really want to access this info but having trouble discerning your words over the background music. Any chance there’s a transcript? Thank you. Meanwhile I’ll keep trying.

[@MattForrest]

I’m still working on my video editing but will try and go back to add subtitles.

[@I_Realism_]

Hello sir, I'm kind of comfortable using ESRI ArcGIS more than Qgis is it fine?

[@jazzmann1984]

As someone who works with Esri products exclusively, yes you are in a good position. Esri's native programming is in Python but also has a bridge to R. You can run your python scripts directly from your Pro project, and if you get a single-use license you will have all the extensions that he describes above. Esri goes further than QGIS which is why I find that any of Esri's products has what I need and more. You also get to use pre-made basemaps instead of looking at your data on a blank white screen, or you can make custom basemaps. You don't need all the plug-ins to use most of the analyses that you need in QGIS. It comes with the platform and often you won't need to write scripts for most things. However, I still recommend learning SQL and Python when you need them. Most cases often revolve around cleaning large datasets. I hope this helps! 😀

[@saulcf3349]

@@jazzmann1984 Sir, Why python and no R?

[@jazzmann1984]

@saul cf from what I'm able to gather, if I'm understanding your question correctly, is that Esri's products are based in Python and to make R work natively would make them have to make duplicate versions of software. So, they built a bridge to R, which works but is not as fluid as just pulling up a Python script directly into your ArcGIS Pro project.

[@MattForrest]

Definitely! I haven't used Esri tools since 2010 but at least on the desktop side that is a good place to start.

[@dino_rider7758]

Where do u rank the relative utility of R?

[@MattForrest]

It is really similar to Python so I think it is a matter of preference, but most of the data shows that the Python ecosystem is growing and advancing faster.

[@chacmool2581]

How would you learn Geospatial Data Science, applying Spatial Statistical modelling? How would you really cut your teeth in Spatial Statistics?

[@MattForrest]

Check out some of the tutorials here: geographicdata.science/book/intro.html

[@sharoonaftab8894]

Why ignore ArcGis

[@MattForrest]

So I haven’t used Esri tools since 2010 so I can’t speak to them!

[@swathysmohan3245]

How can i contact you

[@MattForrest]

Check out my LinkedIn in my profile!

[@iqrasoomro1044]

Can i learn GIS with computer science degree? And get a job

[@MattForrest]

Sure I would check out some online courses to get started then apply your CA background. That’s a great place to start.

[@MattForrest]

*CS background

[@kanchantirpudedeaf2213]

Where i there job in place

[@kanchantirpudedeaf2213]

It's good for job of gis

[@kanchantirpudedeaf2213]

It's good for job of gis