natcap.rios 1.1.16

Resource Investment Optimization System

RIOS: Resource Investment Optimization System

This repository is for RIOS 1.1.4 and later which replaces our Google Code project formerly located at http://code.google.com/p/invest-natcap.water-funds.

About RIOS

RIOS (Resource Investment Optimization System) is a free and open source software tool that supports the design of cost-effective investments in watershed services.

RIOS provides a standardized, science-based approach to watershed management in contexts throughout the world. It combines biophysical, social, and economic data to help users identify the best locations for protection and restoration activities in order to maximize the ecological return on investment, within the bounds of what is socially and politically feasible.

RIOS was developed through an extensive stakeholder engagement process, including input from more than 11 water funds (watershed investment programs) across Latin America. The tool has been tested in diverse ecological, social and political contexts. Early applications in the Cauca Valley of Colombia resulted in RIOS-designed watershed investments up to six times more effective than typical investment approaches. RIOS enables watershed investors to use a replicable, transparent, and stakeholder-driven approach to evaluate projects within a region or between regions, making it easier to track the places where their investments are most needed and most effective.

Questions RIOS can answer

• Which set of watershed investments (in which activities, and where) will yield the greatest returns towards multiple objectives?

• What change in ecosystem services can I expect from these investments?

• How do the benefits of these investments compare to what would have been achieved under an alternate investment strategy?

RIOS Dependencies

RIOS relies on the following python packages:

• numpy

• scipy>=0.13.0

• gdal

• pygeoprocessing>=0.3.0a3

• pyqt4

Release History

1.1.16 (2016/03/11)

• Allowing activity transition effectiveness to be floating point numbers rather than just 0 and 1.

• Removing the following unused outputs from RIOS:

  • [objective_x]objective_level_transitions subdirectory and contents

  • continous_activity_portfolios subdirectory if budget_years == 1

  • yearly_activity_portfolios subdirectory if budget_years == 1

1.1.15 (2015/12/23)

• Patching an issue that can occur in RIOS PORTER when a user provides a landcover map with an unsigned int datatype and a nodata value that exceeds 2^31. In this case the nodata value is arbitrarily set to -9999 on the output PORTER landcover map.

1.1.14 (2015/10/26)

• Patching an issue where a complicated RIOS run with many large raster files and many large vector files would cause RIOS to segfault when making the activity preference/mask layer during prioritization.

1.1.13 (2015/10/13)

• Fixing an issue where a user could put zeros across the transition columns and the activity score would get an “nan” when dividing by the total weight. Now setting denominator of weighted average to 1.0 in cases where the total weight sum is 0.0.

1.1.12 (2015/10/06)

• Patching a LOGGER.debug syntax error on the disk sort routine.

1.1.11 (2015/10/04)

• Addresses yet another memory issue related to large numbers of RIOS activities.

1.1.10 (2015/09/29)

• Fixes another issue where too many activities and/or large input raster sizes would cause the buffering in the disk based sort to memory error. Reduced the buffer item size from 40,000 per block to 1,024 per block.

1.1.9 (2015/09/25)

• Fixed an issue where large numbers of activities and/or large input raster sizes would cause a too many open files OS error on the prioritization step. As an additional positive side effect, runtime performance of RIOS is slightly improved.

1.1.8 (2015/08/11)

• Fixed a bug that causes a PORTER crash when no ag or restoration transitions occur in IPA.

• Fixed internal import and pyinstaller errors that caused headaches when working on a local source branch.

1.1.7 (2015/08/07)

• Validating lulc coefficients table to ensure there is a field called ‘description’. If left out this caused a case where IPA ran normally but PORTER would crash looking for that field.

1.1.6 (2015/07/30)

• Patch to fix an issue where RIOS PORTER didn’t launch and possibly an ImportError on “_superlu” on some machines.

1.1.5 (2015/07/17)

• Hotfix to rearrange references to RIOS Preprocessing tools on select RIOS IPA objective models.

1.1.4 (2015/07/17)

Previous releases of InVEST were from a Google Code site but was migrated in June 2015. This is the first release of RIOS in less than ad hoc project structure.

• Restructured and refactored this repository from the one we used to have on Google code.

• Uses paver to handle builds, distribution, and archival of sample data.

• Uses pyinstaller to build frozen exes.

• Removed ArcGIS preprocessing toolbox and documentation from the installer since it was awkward for users to visit C:Program Filesrios

• Updates to user interface for documentation and ArcGIS preprocessing links.

• Created a single command line interface to launch IPA and PORTER named rios_cli_{version}.exe

• Updated shortcut links in start menu to show the version of RIOS to be launched.