[Qgis-user] How can QGIS help to save the planet? - The Natural Capital Project

[G. Allegri]

Thanks Ben,
I think NCP is a very good effort in the field of natural sources
evaluation and externalities management.
A venial question: is there some founding for the project to move
Invest to Qgis? Do you mean to ask for volunteer time? The actual
modules seems to be quite small, so it shouldn't require a big
work.... but it requires time to get into it.

giovanni



I would like to contribute, gievn the time (and the money...)

2010/2/22 Noli Sicad <nsicad at gmail.com>:
> Hi Ben,
>
> I downloaded Invest 3 months ago and look at it and see what is the
> "inside" of invest. I was particularly interested in the carbon
> sequestration model / module.
>
> I am hoping INVEST project would be one of the projects of Qgis. I
> think QGIS could find developers or current developers can find time
> to work in this project, if Natural Capital Investment can sponsor and
> fund this project.
>
> Probably later on, I can later on "plugin" for optimising the forestry
> carbon estate model to cater for various carbon protocol and standard
> e, REDD and REDD+, etc. using GNU GLPK
> (http://www.gnu.org/software/glpk/glpk.html). I have a forest estate
> LP model (timber supply at the moment) reading data for areas from
> shapefile and writing results in dbf as part of the GNU GLP project
> examples. It can be found in glpk-4.43/examples/db folder).
>
> BTW, I am forest carbon estate modeller.
>
> Noli
>
>
> On 2/22/10, Ben Carlson <ben.s.carlson at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hello QGIS community,
>>
>>
>>
>> I'm writing because I'm looking for a few QGIS programmers who are
>> interested in using their skills to help with an important environmental
>> project.  Before I get into how you can help, here is some info about the
>> project.
>>
>>
>>
>> The Natural Capital project, a joint venture between Stanford University,
>> The Nature Conservancy, and the World Wildlife Fund, is "developing tools
>> for quantifying the values of natural capital in clear, credible, and
>> practical ways".  What is Natural Capital and why is it important to value?
>> To use another related term, Natural Services are services that nature
>> typically, and historically, has provided for free.  Unfortunately, since
>> society is so used to getting these services for free, the services often
>> don't have a value attached to them.
>>
>>
>>
>> For example, a standing forest today may only have one economic value in the
>> marketplace: the price of its timber once cut.  But a forest provides many
>> tangible benefits to society that are not measured in the marketplace, such
>> as water filtration, carbon sequestration, or flood mitigation.  If a real
>> economic value could be put on these services, would their value be greater
>> or less than cutting the forest for timber?
>>
>>
>>
>> You can get quite a bit more information about the NatCap project here:
>>
>> http://www.naturalcapitalproject.org
>>
>> You can also read a good book on the subject by one of the projects leading
>> scientists:
>>
>> http://www.amazon.com/New-Economy-Nature-Conservation-Profitable/dp/1559631546/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266733265&sr=8-2
>>
>>
>>
>> So where does QGIS fit in?  As part of its strategy, the NatCap project is
>> developing software tools using GIS software.  Unfortunately, the only GIS
>> the tool runs on is ArcGIS, which presents a significant barrier to entry
>> for many would-be users around the world.  Based on the project's goals and
>> the open nature of the software it is developing, a free GIS is the more
>> logical choice.  I'm emailing the QGIS community since I use QGIS myself,
>> have found the tool to be great, and the community to be strong. For anybody
>> who feels this is an important use of your time, I would like to ask for
>> your help in making the software work for QGIS.
>>
>>
>>
>> Now for the details.  The software, called Invest, runs as a python script
>> in ArcGIS.  There are around 6 different modules, comprised of 1 to 3 python
>> files for each module.  Each module is around 300 to 900 lines of code.  It
>> would be great if somebody could volunteer to analyze a few of these
>> modules, say - Carbon, Biodiversity, and Timber, to see what it would take
>> to convert them over to QGIS.  Are there any ArcGIS scripting calls that
>> can't be ported over to QGIS?  Can an API layer be written to abstract
>> different GIS?  What about the user interface?  After the assessment is
>> complete, we'll figure out what are next steps.
>>
>>
>> You can read more about the software here:
>>
>> http://www.naturalcapitalproject.org/InVEST.html
>>
>> And you can download the software here:
>>
>> http://invest.ecoinformatics.org/
>>
>>
>> I'm also attaching the Timber module for you to take a look at if you want
>> instant gratification for your curiosity.
>>
>>
>>
>> So, what do you say, any volunteers?  Please let me know, I really
>> appreciate any help!
>>
>>
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>>
>>
>> Ben
>>
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