CostMAP: An open-source software package for developing cost surfaces

Abstract: Cost Surfaces are a quantitative means of assigning social, environmental, and engineering costs that impact movement across landscapes. Cost surfaces are a crucial aspect of route optimization and least cost path (LCP) calculations and are used in a wide range of disciplines including computer science, landscape ecology, and energy infrastructure modeling. Linear features present a key weakness to traditional routing calculations along costs surfaces because they cannot identify whether moving from a cell to its adjacent neighbors constitutes crossing a linear barrier (increased cost) or following a corridor (reduced cost). Following and avoiding linear features can drastically change predicted routes. In this paper, we introduce an approach to address this "adjacency" issue using a search kernel that identifies these critical barriers and corridors. We have built this approach into a new Java-based open-source software package called CostMAP (cost surface multi-layer aggregation program), which calculates cost surfaces and cost networks using the search kernel. CostMAP not only includes the new adjacency capability, it is also a versatile multi-platform package that allows users to input multiple GIS data layers and to set weights and rules for developing a weighted-cost network. We compare CostMAP performance with traditional cost surface approaches and show significant performance gains, both following corridors and avoiding barriers, using examples in a movement ecology framework and pipeline routing for carbon capture, and storage (CCS). We also demonstrate that the new software can straightforwardly calculate cost surfaces on a national scale.