Bestagon QGIS Plugin

Introduction

The Bestagon plugin allows fast visualization for point intensities represented by different forms as rectangles or hexagons. More forms are coming soon... Enjoy 💙

🚧 It is recommended to use the same version as the plugin is developed with: QGIS 3.34.0 🚧

Installation

Download the zip file of the master branch of the current repository and install it manually via the plugin installation manager of QGIS. Bestagon requires a minimum QGIS version of 3.0. You might restart QGIS once after the installation. Alternatively, search for Bestagon in the QGIS plugin installation manager and hit install.

Exemplary Usage

To work, Bestagon requires a point layer to display any intensity information. Anyhow, the independence of the source of the file, we demonstrate the usage on a point layer file by QuickOSM from OpenStreetMap. Furthermore, shapefiles used in the following analysis can be downloaded at GADM country-wise.

Research Question

In the following, we investigate onto the bakery-density across europe. Since Germany is called the land with the most sorts of bread, we would expect the highest density of individual bakeries here. Bestagon easily gives a visual overview whether this is true through the following steps:

1. Download the data
   We here utilize a point layer of QuickOSM of all backeries in europe and the world GADM administrative boundaries shapefile, cut to europe. (also described in Section Exemplary Usage).

2. Bestagon settings
   Call the installed Bestagon QGIS plugin by the icon in the toolbar or via Plugins > Bestagon > Bestagon and set up the following settings:

   • Mandatory params:

     • Point layer: export.gpkg (Bakery point layer from QuickOSM)
     • Form width: 100 (km)
     • Form height: 100 (km)

   • Optional shape params:

     • Shape layer: europe_clip.gpkg (Clipped administrative border layer from GADM)
     • Mask layer
     • Keep form (not recommended for large extends)

   • Optional style params:

     • Color ramp: GnBu (customizable also later on)
     • Number of classes: 35

The configuration should then look like denoted:

Hit run and enjoy 😛. The output will look like depicted in the following picture:

As shown, the bakery density is indeed clustered in the land of the bread, Germany. Through the fast and easy visualization we can directly conclude that the bread variety decreases, the more north-east we go, as fewer bakeries are available. We show of further potential of Bestagon with the bakery density in Germany by playing around with the settings it provides:

Rectangle	Diamond	Hexagon	Triangle	Fishernet	Bubbles

Through the soft cut option (Keep form), we preserve forms at the border and remove (not) forms not intersecting with the shape file provided. We depict a soft-cut version in the following figure: