William & Mary
Close menu Resources for... William & Mary
Popular Topics
Suggested Results
News Events
Apply Visit Request Info
W&M menu close William & Mary
Arts & Sciences
Geospatial Analysis

Software Tools

We provide access to and instruction in up-to-date geospatial software tools. If you have any questions, contact us at [[cga]].
ArcGIS Online

If you're looking to get started with ArcGIS Online and Esri Story Maps, follow the steps below to setup your account.

  1. Go to ArcGIS online and click "sign in"
  2. Select "Your ArcGIS organization's URL"
  3. Type "wm-gis".maps.arcgis.com
  4. Select "College of William & Mary"
  5. Enter your W&M user id and password (same as logging into banner)
  6. You are ready to get started!

If you any questions/issues while downloading either program, please email us at [[cga]]. 

ArcGIS Pro Software

We are happy to make Esri's GIS software available to William & Mary students, faculty, and staff for use on their personal computers. The software can only be run on Windows computers or Macs running Windows. Follow the links below for instructions on how to download and install ArcGIS Pro. 

 DOWNLOAD ARCGIS PRO

ArcGIS Desktop Software
As of June 30, 2022 Esri is no longer issuing student licenses of ArcGIS Desktop products. Esri is discontinuing support of the ArcMap product and we suggest you transition to ArcGIS Pro (see download instructions above).

Your GIS data will continue to work in ArcGIS Pro. Esri has a free training about transitioning from ArcMap to ArcGIS Pro found at: https://learn.arcgis.com/en/projects/migrate-from-arcmap-to-arcgis-pro/

Open Source GIS: QGIS

QGIS is an open-source geographic information systems (GIS) program and, over the years, has evolved to being a strong competitor as a personal GIS platform. QGIS has a decent user interface and it can be used to script and automate analyses. One of the strengths of QGIS is that—in addition to providing a GIS interface of its own—it also integrates tools from a range of other GIS programs. Notably, these include:

  • The Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL), which provides a suite of tools and programs for converting and manipulating spatial data.
  • The Geographic Resources Analysis Support System (GRASS GIS), which is a complete GIS system in its own right, but has until recently been largely a command-line application.

The CGA recommends downloading the Long-Term Release (LTR) for stability. Resources to learn QGIS can be found here.

DOWNLOAD QGIS