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InVEST: Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs

About InVEST

InVEST (Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs) is a family of tools for quantifying the values of natural capital in clear, credible, and practical ways. In promising a return (of societal benefits) on investments in nature, the scientific community needs to deliver knowledge and tools to quantify and forecast this return. InVEST enables decision-makers to quantify the importance of natural capital, to assess the tradeoffs associated with alternative choices, and to integrate conservation and human development.

Older versions of InVEST ran as script tools in the ArcGIS ArcToolBox environment, but have almost all been ported over to a purely open-source python environment.

InVEST is licensed under a permissive, modified BSD license.

For more information, see:

Installing InVEST

Python Dependencies

Dependencies for natcap.invest are listed in requirements.txt:

{requirements}

Additionally, a python binding for Qt is needed to use the InVEST GUI, but is not required for development against natcap.invest. InVEST uses the interface library qtpy to support PyQt4, PyQt5, PySide, and PySide2. In our experience, PyQt4 and PySide2 have been easiest to work with. One of these bindings for Qt must be installed in order to use the GUI.

Installing from Source

If you have a compiler installed and configured for your system, and dependencies installed, the easiest way to install InVEST as a python package is:

$ pip install natcap.invest

Installing the latest development version

The latest development version of InVEST can be installed from our source tree:

$ pip install hg+https://bitbucket.org/natcap/invest@develop

Usage

To run an InVEST model from the command-line, use the invest cli single entry point:

$ invest --help
usage: invest [-h] [--version] [-v | --debug] [--list] [-l] [-d [DATASTACK]]
              [-w [WORKSPACE]] [-q] [-y] [-n]
              [model]

Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs. InVEST (Integrated
Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs) is a family of tools for
quantifying the values of natural capital in clear, credible, and practical
ways. In promising a return (of societal benefits) on investments in nature,
the scientific community needs to deliver knowledge and tools to quantify and
forecast this return. InVEST enables decision-makers to quantify the
importance of natural capital, to assess the tradeoffs associated with
alternative choices, and to integrate conservation and human development.
Older versions of InVEST ran as script tools in the ArcGIS ArcToolBox
environment, but have almost all been ported over to a purely open-source
python environment.

positional arguments:
  model                 The model/tool to run. Use --list to show available
                        models/tools. Identifiable model prefixes may also be
                        used. Alternatively,specify "launcher" to reveal a
                        model launcher window.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --version             show program's version number and exit
  -v, --verbose         Increase verbosity. Affects how much is printed to the
                        console and (if running in headless mode) how much is
                        written to the logfile.
  --debug               Enable debug logging. Alias for -vvvvv
  --list                List available models
  -l, --headless        Attempt to run InVEST without its GUI.
  -d [DATASTACK], --datastack [DATASTACK]
                        Run the specified model with this datastack
  -w [WORKSPACE], --workspace [WORKSPACE]
                        The workspace in which outputs will be saved

gui options:
  These options are ignored if running in headless mode

  -q, --quickrun        Run the target model without validating and quit with
                        a nonzero exit status if an exception is encountered

headless options:
  -y, --overwrite       Overwrite the workspace without prompting for
                        confirmation
  -n, --no-validate     Do not validate inputs before running the model.

To list the available models:

$ invest --list

Development

Dependencies for developing InVEST are listed in requirements.txt and in requirements-dev.txt. If you're running a GUI, you'll need a Qt binding (see above) and the packages installed in requirements-gui.txt.

Support

Participate in the NatCap forums here: http://community.naturalcapitalproject.org

Bugs may be reported at http://bitbucket.org/natcap/invest