Combining buffering, zonal statistics, and spatial joins in Q-GIS

This tutorial explains how to use Q-GIS 3.2.3 to create buffers around a vector file, compute the zonal statistics to summarize population from a raster file using those buffers, and spatial join the data from the zonal statistics back to the original point file. These analyses are useful in many GIS applications, including spatial epidemiology. As one example, these functions can be used to estimate the population within a user defined radius of outbreak location to calculate disease prevalence or incidence for a local population.

This work was sponsored by the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency's Cooperative Biological Engagement Program/Biological Threat Reduction Program in Southeast Asia.