Tutorials
These tutorials will teach you how to use the maplanscape workflow to set up a data collection project, map features in-the-field, capture information using digital forms, share the project with a team of collaborators, visualise project data on web maps and dashboards, and automate reporting tasks that use field data.
The tutorials are based on an example of setting up a farm survey in Fiji or Tonga. However, the concepts and skills you will learn can be applied to a range of data collection tasks such as household surveys, baseline and project monitoring and evaluation, ground truth data generation for remote sensing and land cover classification, or detailed GIS mapping.
Create data collection projects
Learn how to use QGIS to create a field data collection project to use with QField. Push the project to QFieldCloud to share with large teams of data collectors and automatically sync project data collected across many mobile devices.
This tutorial demonstrates the key concepts and process required to create a data collection project. You will learn how to:
- create a database file to store project data.
- style and theme map layers.
- create digital forms for collecting non-spatial data.
- use online and offline basemaps.
- push and synchronise projects with QFieldCloud.
- tips and tricks for minimising data collection error.
Get started
Install QGIS on your computer.
Download the tutorial data:
Start the tutorials: Fiji example or Tonga example
Further reading
Explore the official QField docs for getting started with QFieldCloud and QFieldSync. The QField How-to guides have lots of tips and examples for creating great data collection projects.
Collect data with QField
Get started
Learn how to use QField mobile GIS to digitise spatial features on a map and use digital forms to collect attribute information. This tutorial uses the example of collecting and labelling point data with a land cover type to generate a dataset that can be used for ground truth data collection for land cover mapping.
Download the land cover ground truth data collection project. You can either load this project to QFieldCloud or open locally in QField.
A short tutorial on using QField here.
QFieldCloud for project management
QFieldCloud is a Django based service developed by OPENGIS.ch for synchronising field data from data collectors using QField with a central project, managing user accounts, and versioning project data.
OPENGIS.ch’s hosted version
OPENGIS.ch provide hosted version of QFieldCloud. It is easy to get up and running using this service. You just need to sign up at QFieldCloud, choose a plan, and start a collaborative data collection project. This service is also kept in-sync with development of QField.
Follow the QFieldCloud get started and advanced setup tutorials to learn how to use OPENGIS.ch’s hosted QFieldCloud service.
Manage your own QFieldCloud instance
Follow the instructions on the QFieldCloud GitHub repo to deploy your own instance of QFieldCloud.
To manage your own instance of QFieldCloud, you can use the maplandscape admin web application.
Get started
Use docker and Shiny Proxy to deploy maplandscape* admin anywhere.
A short tutorial on using maplandscape-admin here.
This tutorial will show you how to use maplandscape-admin to browse project data and collaborators, invite collaborators to join a project, assign user roles and permissions to collaborators on a project, and reset or change your QFieldCloud password.
Geospatial data visualisation and analysis
This tutorial will show you how to view and analyse QField data using the maplandscape dashboard in your web browser. You will learn how to explore QField data on web maps, interactive tables, and charts and use report automation tools.
There are tools for customising web maps and charts for QField data visualisation.
You can also apply geospatial and table analysis operations on your QField data to transform it into formats ready for analysis, summarising, and reporting. Specifically, there are simple and easy to use options for:
- filtering rows of a data table.
- adding new columns to a data table.
- joining two spatial layers.
- joining two tables.
- group-by and summarise to generate summary tables.
In this tutorial you will download some crop survey data from the island group of Vava’u and spatial layers of Tonga’s blocks and village boundaries from a QFieldCloud project. You will learn how to use filter operations to subset rows from the crop survey data corresponding to a type of cropping system, use the add column functions to create new columns in a data table describing plant density per-field, use spatial and non-spatial joins to attach block and village name columns to the crop survey layer, and create village summaries of crop and plant number. You will also learn how to export batches of summary tables and charts to assist with report generation.
Cartography with QGIS
This tutorial demonstrates how to use QGIS and its cartography tools to create a land cover map for a Tikina in Fiji.
You can download a land cover map to style from the alpha version of landcover.fijiflood.com. This application serves annual land cover maps for all-Fiji using an early release of a machine learning model developed by this research team and time-series of Sentinel-2 data. Please note this model is under development and the land cover maps are being subjected to field verification; do not use these maps for production or science purposes.
To complete this tutorial you will need to install QGIS on your computer.
Follow the tutorial here.