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natcap / invest.users-guide

The User's Guide for InVEST
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Add more context for "interpretation" of outputs #7

Open dcdenu4 opened 4 years ago

dcdenu4 commented 4 years ago

When helping a user with UFRM I noticed that the Users Guide did not provide much context for the outputs. A lot of users post questions related to "how should this output be used?". I think it would be worthwhile and beneficial to have 2-3 sentences with the outputs that provides some context. For example one of the outputs for UFRM is:

Runoff_retention_m3.tif: raster with runoff retention values (in m3). Calculated from equation runoff_retention_volume.

There's not much "interpreting" being done for that output. A better form might be:

Runoff_retention_m3.tif: raster with runoff retention values as volume (in m3). These pixel values are calculated from the runoff_retention_volume equation and can be used to look at [ how this and this leads to this. ]. The pixel values are used to compute aggregates in the flood_risk_service output and should not be used as truth at the pixel level

I think this is an issue across most invest models.

This issue came from https://github.com/natcap/invest/issues/173#issuecomment-656970336

dcdenu4 commented 3 years ago

See the Wave Energy UG Output section for a minimum of what "interpretation" of outputs should be.

The potential wave power map indicates wave power resources based on wave conditions. These often provide the first cut in the siting process for a wave energy project.

The NPV map indicates the economic value of a WEC facility composed of multiple devices. A positive value indicates net benefit; a negative value indicates a net loss. Such information can be used to locate potential areas where a wave energy facility may be economically feasible.