Coastal Vulnerability: how to define the Area of Interest

Good morning!

I’m having doubts about the size or rather the extension of the AOI. I wanted to use an administrative boundary, but I’m afraid the actual model won’t consider possible geogological features that may interfere with the results. Should I just draw an arbritrary polygon to an extent i think the AOI should extend to (e.g.: include an island near the shore) and ignore the administrative boundary?

Hi @ana , great question!

I think the User Guide has good advice on this topic here: Coastal Vulnerability Model — InVEST® documentation

Basically, this model uses the AOI to define the portion of the coastline that should be assessed, but it does not use it to clip the other layers for exactly the reasons you mention. So go ahead and use layers with wide extents to represent the landmass, bathymetry, etc, and for the AOI, just draw a polygon around the portion of the coastline you are interested in. Using an administrative boundary might not work very well because you want to be sure that some part of the landmass boundary (coastline) is within the AOI polygon.

Alright, then! Thanks so much @dave for the quick response :slight_smile:

This topic was automatically closed 7 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.