View Image

Commonly referred to as GRASS, this is a free Geographic Information System (GIS) used for geospatial data management and analysis, image processing, graphics/maps production, spatial modeling, and visualization. GRASS is currently used in academic and commercial settings around the world, as well as by many governmental agencies and environmental consulting companies. GRASS is an official project of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation.

Over the past decade Geographical Information Systems (GIS) have evolved from a highly specialized niche to a technology that affects nearly every aspect of our lives, from finding driving directions to managing natural disasters.
GRASS GIS is a general purpose raster/vector GIS combined with integrated image processing and data visualization subsystems. It includes a large number of modules for management, processing, analysis and visualization of georeferenced data.

Unlike most proprietary GIS, GRASS provides complete access to its internal structure and algorithms. Advanced users who want to write their own GIS modules may therefore learn from existing modules as well as by reading the ``GRASS Programmer's Manual''. The documented GRASS GIS libraries with the Application Programming Interface (API) make the new module development more efficient and allow to integrate new functionality into GRASS. Applications can be also written with shell scripts to automate the GIS workflow.

GRASS is currently used in academic and commercial settings around the world, as well as by many governmental agencies and environmental consulting companies.