I have found that between scenarios my main variation is habitat area, not just if habitat is present or absent within the protection range of the shore point. Therefore different scenarios often have the same exposure rating, even if habitat area has changed.
For better quantification of the relative protection provided by a model iteration where 1 km2 of mangrove is within protection range vs 100 km2 of mangrove within the protection range, I would need the model to assess habitat area within protection range, not presence/absence of habitat. I imagine I would input a habitats table that provided a rank for categories of habitat area.
I am new to python and coding - would you please be able to offer me any support in editing the model to achieve this?
Ah, I’m sorry to say that the support we can offer for this sort of thing is pretty limited, but you’re very welcome to make the changes you require! Github forks are excellent for this sort of thing. The InVEST source code is located at https://github.com/natcap/invest, and you’ll find the Coastal Vulnerability source code itself at src/natcap/invest/coastal_vulnerability.py. You’ll notice that many geoprocessing operations are implemented with our geoprocessing library, pygeoprocessing, which may help you in your modifications.
You may also be interested in a couple of documentation pages we’ve put together along the lines of how to set up an environment and install the natcap.invest python package: