ILWIS


Integrated Land and Water Information System is a geographic information system and remote sensing software for both vector and raster processing. Its features include digitizing, editing, analysis and display of data, and production of quality maps. ILWIS was initially developed and distributed by ITC Enschede in the Netherlands for use by its researchers and students. Since 1 July 2007, it has been released as free software under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
Having been used by many students, teachers and researchers for more than two decades, ILWIS is one of the most user-friendly integrated vector and raster software programmes currently available. ILWIS has some very powerful raster analysis modules, a high-precision and flexible vector and point digitizing module, a variety of very practical tools, as well as a great variety of user guides and training modules all available for downloading. The current version is ILWIS 3.8.6.
Similar to the GRASS GIS in many respects, ILWIS is currently available natively only on Microsoft Windows. However, a Linux Wine manual has been released.

History

In late 1984, ITC was awarded a grant from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which led to developing a geographic information system which could be used as a tool for land use planning and watershed management studies. By the end of 1988, a DOS version 1.0 of the Integrated Land and Water Information System was released. Two years later, ILWIS was made commercial with ITC establishing a worldwide distributors network. ILWIS 2.0 for Windows was released at the end of 1996, and ILWIS 3.0 by mid-2001. On 1 January 2004, ILWIS 3.2 was released as a shareware. Since July 1, 2007, ILWIS has been distributed as an open source software under GPL license.

Release history

This table is based on .
Old VersionCurrent VersionFuture Version

BranchVersionRelease dateSignificant changes
3.13.1April 2002
3.1Patch 3.11September 2002Direct import of Aster satellite images level 1a and 1b, including all needed geometric and radiometric corrections. This functionality is integrated in the Import Map Wizard.
3.1Patch 3.11September 2002Stereopair from DTM - Stereo pair from DTM operation creates a stereo pair from a single raster map and a Digital Terrain Model. These stereo pairs have the same usability as the Epipolar Stereo Pair.
3.1Patch 3.12aAugust 2003ID Grid map - creates a polygon map given a coordinate system and an attribute table. The polygon map consists of rectangular grid cells with a unique ID and can be linked to a table with attribute data when sample data is available.
3.1Patch 3.12aAugust 2003Spherical Distance option was added to the operations Spatial Correlation, Cross Variogram, Nearest Point, Moving Average, Moving Surface, Kriging and CoKriging. This option calculates distances over the sphere instead of in a plane.
3.1Patch 3.12aAugust 2003Export to ArcPad.PRJ - ILWIS coordinate systems can be exported to an ArcPad.prj file.
3.23.2January, 2004Spatial Multiple Criteria Evaluation
3.23.2January, 2004Hydrologic Flow Operations
3.23.2January, 2004Find Datum Parameters Wizard
3.23.2January, 2004GARtrip import
3.2Patch 3.21August, 2004Extensions in Spatial Multiple Criteria Evaluation - slicing, histograms, aggregated values, and an improvement in class map standardization.
3.2Patch 3.21August, 2004Improvement in calling external executable files - Support for parameter passing, wait-till-finished option and error handling, and inclusion in a script as part of a batch process.
3.2Patch 3.21August, 2004Support for coordinates for images from the MeteoSat-8 satellite.
3.33.3September 2005The SMCE application extended with overlay of reference maps, combination of spatial and non-spatial MCE, and interactive function graphs for standardization.
3.33.3September 2005Applications for DEM hydroprocessing implemented, like topological optimization, drainage network extraction, catchment extraction, horton statistics etc.
3.33.3September 2005Georeferencing with additional supports up to 8 fiducial marks, sub-pixel precision and 3D coordinate transformations using 7 or 10 datum parameters.
3.33.3September 2005Import and export using the GDAL library.
3.33.3September 2005Projections for geostationary satellites.
3.33.3September 2005Calculation and statistical functions for map lists.
3.43.4 OpenJuly 1, 2007GPL version from 52°North with proprietary components removed.
3.53.5December 12, 2008Introduction of plug-in system for applications. Started with the Geonetcast toolbox.
3.63.6April 21, 2009Refactoring of the whole vector system of Ilwis and with that a 25 new applications mainly, but not exclusively, about set operations on vector types. First implementation of the second generation Geonetcast toolbox.
3.73.7March 25, 2010Added number of new applications.
3.73.7.1September 15, 2010A number of bug fixes to ILWIS 3.7.
3.73.7.224 May 2011A number of bug fixes.
3.83.8April 7, 2012Massive rewrite of the whole visualization of maps. This rewrite expanded the tools for visual analysis substantially and improved the overall performance of the drawing process.
3.83.8.1September 19, 2012A number of bug fixes.
3.83.8.2January 16, 2013A number of bug fixes as well as a few new features.
3.83.8.3April 15, 2014This release contains several bug fixes as well as a few new features.
3.83.8.4May 23, 2014Several bug fixes, improvements and a few new features.
3.83.8.5September 3, 2015Several bug fixes, improvements and a few new features.
3.83.8.6January 22, 2020Several bug fixes, improvements and a few new features.

Features

ILWIS uses GIS techniques that integrate image processing capabilities, a tabular database and conventional GIS characteristics.
The major features include:
The next major version of Ilwis will be based on the Ilwis NG framework. This framework aims at being a connection hub between various heterogeneous data and processing sources. Integrating them in a consistent way and presenting them in a unified to the end users. The framework will be cross platform and will be deployable on mobile devices.