i Insensa-GIS

About Insensa-GIS

Insensa-GIS is a free, open-source desktop tool for statistical analysis of geospatial raster data, weighted index development, and reproducible sensitivity analyses.

Origins

The software was programmed by Dennis Biber and grew out of the conceptual work of Lisa Freudenberger. The conceptual development contributes to her dissertation in the cooperative graduate programme Adaptive Nature Conservation under Climate Change.

Development took place under the mandate of the University for Sustainable Development Eberswalde and the Centre for Econics and Ecosystem Services Eberswalde.

Funding & Acknowledgements

The research project was funded by the Academy of Sciences and Literature Mainz (Germany), and the Ministry of Science, Research and Culture with resources from the European Social Fund and the Federal State of Brandenburg.

We acknowledge the contributions of our collaborators:

  • Prof. Pierre L. Ibisch — University for Sustainable Development Eberswalde, Germany
  • Dr. Peter Hobson — Writtle College, Essex, England
  • Prof. Florian Jeltsch — University Potsdam, Germany
  • Ralf Emig — for legal support concerning software naming and trademark protection

Reactivation 2026

After several years of dormancy, Insensa-GIS is being reactivated. The 2.x line modernises the build system, restores R/Rserve stability and adds an R-first plugin pipeline. The R helper package insensa lets researchers ship their analyses as full plugins — settings dialog included — without writing Java.

License

Insensa-GIS is released under the GNU General Public License v3 (GPLv3). Any derivative or software product reusing parts of Insensa-GIS must also be released under the GPL.

How to cite

If you use Insensa-GIS for a publication, please cite the software as:

Biber D., Freudenberger L., Ibisch P. L. (2011) INSENSA-GIS: an open-source software tool for GIS data processing and statistical analysis. (Insert version number used.)

Selected publications using Insensa-GIS

Journal articles

  • Robinne F. N., et al. (2016) A Global Index for Mapping the Exposure of Water Resources to Wildfire. Forests 7(1):22 — doi:10.3390/f7010022.
  • Freudenberger L., et al. (2013) Spatial Road Disturbance Index (SPROADI) for conservation planning: a novel landscape index, demonstrated for the State of Brandenburg, Germany. Landscape Ecology 28(7):1353–1369 — doi:10.1007/s10980-013-9887-8.
  • Freudenberger L., et al. (2013) Nature Conservation: Priority-setting needs a global change. Biodiversity and Conservation 22(5):1255–1281 — doi:10.1007/s10531-012-0428-6.
  • Freudenberger L., Hobson P., Schluck M., Ibisch P. L. (2012) A global map of the functionality of terrestrial ecosystems. Ecological Complexity 12:13–22 — doi:10.1016/j.ecocom.2012.08.002.

Book chapters

The 2012 volume Regionale Anpassung des Naturschutzes an den Klimawandel: Strategien und methodische Ansätze zur Erhaltung der Biodiversität und Ökosystemdienstleistungen in Brandenburg (Ibisch, Kreft & Luthardt, Eds., HNE Eberswalde, ISBN 978-3-00-038210-9) contains two chapters that explicitly use Insensa-GIS for their analyses:

  • Freudenberger L., Schluck M., Ibisch P. L. (2012) Bewertung der Funktionstüchtigkeit von Ökosystemen im Klimawandel — neuartige Prioritätensetzung auf der Grundlage aktueller Ökosystemforschung. pp. 144–155 in: Ibisch, Kreft & Luthardt (Eds.), op. cit.
  • Sauermann J., Freudenberger L., Mund J.-P., Ibisch P. L. (2012) Naturschutzpriorisierung von Waldflächen am Beispiel des Landkreises Barnim, Brandenburg. pp. 156–167 in: Ibisch, Kreft & Luthardt (Eds.), op. cit.

Are you using Insensa-GIS in your work? Let us know — drop a note on the stackexchange tag or open an issue in the bug tracker.