I'm Hans van der Kwast. With more than 20 years of experience with GIS and Remote Sensing in education and projects, I'm now offering consultancy, training and coaching in open source GIS. I'm an active member in the QGIS community, a QGIS certified trainer, and board member of the Dutch QGIS User Group. I've established the GIS OpenCourseWare platform for sharing free course materials on QGIS, Python, Mergin Maps, Google Earth Engine and much more. The PCRaster Tools plugin for QGIS that I've developed has been downloaded more than 70k times. Furthermore, I'm co-author of the book QGIS for Hydrological Applications and I have a YouTube Channel with more than 30k subscribers. As a member of QCooperative, I'm well connected with the best open source GIS developers.
I offer online consultancy on GIS work flows with QGIS, Mergin Maps, Python, PCRaster, WebODM, GDAL and other open source software.
I create online tailor-made training on open source GIS software and Python. For QGIS I provide the official QGIS certificate.
I provide online coaching sessions to beginning and more advanced GIS professionals. Topics for coaching could be on open source business model development, marketing or GIS career development.
Check my YouTube Channel and the GIS OpenCourseWare platform for free videos and step-by-step tutorials. These come without support and without certificates.
Taking part in the #30DayMapChallenge is always a test of creativity and endurance, but November 2025 proved to be especially demanding. The month began with the grandeur of Carmina Burana concerts at MECC Maastricht, performed with Brabantkoor (I was a tenor in the choir) and the Jussen Brothers, and quickly unfolded into a whirlwind of...
FOSS4G Europe 2025 was organised in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina from 14 - 20 July 2025. The first two days were packed with interesting workshops, followed by three days of inspiring talks from the amazing open source geo community. This blog presents my FOSS4G Europe 2025 journey.
FOSS4GNL 2025, held on July 2–3 in the stunning new Omnia building at Wageningen Campus was another great edition of FOSS4GNL with over 200 participants! Over two days, the Dutch open geospatial community gathered to share breakthroughs, build skills, and have a ridiculously good time.
On June 28th 2025, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Safae Alaa for the To Open Doors I.Talk podcast, and our conversation went through my 25-year journey in GIS.