QGIS Site Analysis for Thesis: Prepare Context Maps and a Jury Sheet

QGIS can help organize terrain, land-use, drainage, and context information for a site-study sheet. The layers below are an illustrative workflow, not a documented student outcome or a promise about preparation time or jury feedback.

The 4 layers every site sheet needs

• Contours at 1m interval from SRTM 30m tiles. Clip to 1km x 1km around the plot.
• Landuse: OSM polygons for roads, gardens, water, transit. Export as high-contrast figure-ground.
• Watershed: run Fill > Flow Accumulation on the DEM, threshold at 500 cells for thesis scale.
• Context: 500m radius with plot polyline + setback envelope drawn on top.

QGIS to ArchHive studio handoff

• Export each layer as PNG at 300 DPI, transparent background.
• Drop the same boundary into our Site Analysis Studio at /site-analysis-tool. The OSM context map is free, no key, and the sun path tool gives shadow + Export PNG for the climate sheet.
• Example export names: contours.png, figure-ground.png, watershed.png, context.png. File sizes depend on the source data, map extent, and export settings.

What the jury actually checks

• North arrow + scale bar on every map. Missing scale kills credibility.
• Source line: SRTM + OpenStreetMap contributors + survey date.
• One inference per map. Contour map says slope drives entry. Landuse map says noise comes from the east road.

This is reference material for study, not work to submit as your own. Draw your own analysis from what you learn.

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