brdrQ: a QGIS-processing plugin for aligning thematic borders to reference borders. (for QGIS v3.34.8 or higher)

Quick links:

• Installation
• Issues, questions, comments and contributions

Description

brdrQ is a QGIS-processing plugin that aligns features (polygons) to reference borders: It searches for overlap relevance between thematic borders and reference borders, and creates a resulting border based on the overlapping areas that are relevant. The algorithm can make (one or more) 'predictions' so the user can compare and choose the right aligned geometry.

The purpose of this plugin is to automatically adjust thematic boundaries (polygons) on a reference layer (polygons) based on a 'relevant distance'. This parameter is used in the algorithm to determine where the boundaries are effectively adjusted to the reference layer, or where the original boundary is preserved. Thus, the adjustment of the boundaries of resulting geometries and original geometries is at most as large as the 'relevant distance'

Installation

Pre-requisites

• Plugin is tested for QGIS on Windows. (For newer versions of Ubuntu/Linux it could be needed to run QGIS inside a virtual environment. You can use the following script to create a virtual environment and run QGIS before following the installation steps below: linuxvenvqgis.sh. Usage of the plugin on Mac is not tested, and can give errors or unexpected behaviour.)
• QGIS >3.34.8: The plugin has been developed and tested based on QGIS 3.34.8. (In older versions, the plugin might give unexpected behaviour)
• brdr needs Shapely 2.0.2 or higher. This version of Shapely is already available by default in QGIS version 3.34.8 and higher on Windows installations. On Linux and Mac this may not be the case. If the modules are not found, the plugin will attempt to install both 'brdr' and 'shapely' from Pypi.

Installation-steps

You can install the latest release of brdrQ by adding a custom plugin-repository-url: https://github.com/OnroerendErfgoed/brdrQ/raw/refs/heads/main/dist/plugins.xml , so brdrQ will become available in the plugin-list.

Please follow the steps below to make the plugin available:

1. Open the 'Plugins'>>'Manage and install plugins...' from the topbar of QGIS

2a. Choose: 'Settings' and use the 'Add'-button to add the following repository: https://github.com/OnroerendErfgoed/brdrQ/raw/refs/heads/main/dist/plugins.xml

2b. When the custom repo is succesfully added, 'brdrQ' will appear in the list of available plugins:

2c. The plugin can be installed by clicking: 'Install plugin':

2d. In some cases a 'ModuleNotFound'-Error like below will popup because the right version of 'brdr' is not yet available in QGIS.
When this error occurs, please ignore this error and restart QGIS so the newer version of 'brdr' will re-install automatically and the brdrQ-plugin will become available.

(While adding the plugin to QGIS, the necessary python-dependencies will be installed if not yet available on your machine. If dependencies need to be installed, a screen like below can pop up. Please wait until installation is finished. The screen will close automatically after installation.)

1. After a successful installation/restart, check in the 'Installed'-tab of the QGIS Plugin Manager if the 'brdrQ'-plugin is activated (red arrow). if not, you have to activate the checkbox

1. The plugin 'brdrQ' is now installed as a toolbar and the brdrQProvider is also available in the Processing Toolbox. First open the processing toolbox and look for 'brdrQProvider'

1. Double-click on the 'Autocorrectborders' tool, and the tool opens:

1. The brdrQ-plugin also provides a Feature-by-Feature align tool that is available in the toolbar.

The brdrQ - PLUGIN

The brdrQ-plugin adds a toolbar, a toolmenu (vector) & a brdrQ processing provider (processing toolbox) with several tools. You can find a link to the docs of each tool/script below.

brdrQ Tool Menu (vector)

brdrQ Toolbar

brdrQ Processing provider

Tools/Scripts

• A custom tool (feature-by-feature):
  • FeatureAligner (predictor): Custom tool to align feature-by-feature based on predictions link to documentation
• 2 processing algorithm scripts (bulk):
  • AutoCorrectBorders:Processing algorithm to align polygons based on a specific relevant distance link to documentation
  • AutoUpdateBorders (GRB Updater): Processing algorithm to update/align features based on the actual situation of the GRB link to documentation
• Plugin version information: overview of the version of brdr and brdrQ

(Also note that these processing algorithms can also be used inside the QGIS ModelBuilder to 'chain' processes)

Motivation & citation

The plugin uses brdr, a python-package to align thematic borders to reference borders.

• For more information about the conceptual method/algorithm consult: https://github.com/OnroerendErfgoed/brdr.

Development

A released python-package of brdr is automatically installed when installing the brdrQ-plugin.

A non-released (development-) version of brdr can be installed as QGIS-Python-site-package by:

f.e. 'C:\Program Files\QGIS 3.38.1>python -m pip install C:\x\x\x\x\brdr'

the brdr-package is installed in a user-directory:

f.e. 'C:\Users\x\AppData\Roaming\Python\Python312\site-packages'

Comments and contributions

We would love to hear from you and your experiences with brdrQ or its sister project brdr. The discussions forum is the place to be when:

• You have any questions on using brdrQ or brdr or their applicability to your use cases
• Want to share your experiences with the library
• Have any suggestions for improvements or feature requests

If you have discovered a bug in the brdrQ library you can report it here:

https://github.com/OnroerendErfgoed/brdrQ/issues

We try to keep the list of issues as clean as possible. If you're unsure whether something is a bug, or whether the bug is in brdrQ or brdr, we encourage you to go through the discussions forum first.

Acknowledgement

This software was created by Athumi, the Flemish data utility company, and Flanders Heritage Agency.