Defining New Boundaries in QGIS Based on Existing Definitions

Abstract: Handling geographical data is a common necessity at many organisations today. At The Church of Sweden, the parishes needs to be divided into election districts prior to an election in 2017. In order to streamline this process, there has been a request for a system tool which can load and reuse previously stored election district divisions. In addition, a tool which can be used to draw boundaries along elements of a background map has been wished for. A tool like this would be beneficial in cases where a neighborhood might have grown since the last election, and the Church would not like to split the neighborhood in two. A plugin to the open-source program Quantum Geographical Information System was developed which guides a user through the process of dividing a parish into election districts based on an earlier definition. Furthermore, different image-processing algorithms were examined in order to find a suitable solution to implementing a new drawing tool which could follow elements in a map. The developed plugin will probably be helpful in further elections beyond 2017 as well, however a tool to draw boundaries along map features is yet to be implemented.