QCircularStats: A QGIS-Plugin for Evaluation Bidimensional Data by Circular Statistics

Abstract

Circular statistics have been developed and used in a wide range of branches of knowledge related to the study and observation of the Earth, such as physical, geographical, ecological, and biological sciences. Both to facilitate its use by a less specialised community and to extend its analysis within the research community, this work presents the application of circular statistics in QGIS, an open-source Geographic Information Systems, through the design and implementation of a novel and complete plugin, named QCircularStats. This free and open-source plugin provides a comprehensive, understandable, and visual way to conduct circular analysis over remote sensing data. The behaviour of the proposed QCircularStats is evaluated over real satellite data. Particularly, data on wind speed and direction over the oceans collected by the microwave sensor allocated on the QuikSCAT satellite have been considered. Results obtained demonstrate the performance, functionality, and versatility of the implemented plugin.