Ecological connectivity modelling with WebAssembly
TL;DR
This work presents a WebAssembly/Rust toolset with a geospatial data pipeline and efficient implementation of connectivity analysis, which has the potential to reduce backend operational complexity, resource requirements, and overall cost.
Abstract
Circuit theory has been successfully applied to ecological connectivity modelling, notably via the Circuitscape [1] software, which is typically run locally on a laptop or via a server. For downstream geospatial web applications relying on connectivity analysis, backend infrastructure is required, which can be costly and require advanced data governance. Recent developments in WebAssembly (Wasm) now allow fast C++ or Rust code to be run directly in a sandboxed browser environment for edge computing. We present a WebAssembly/Rust toolset with a geospatial data pipeline and efficient implementation of connectivity analysis. This approach may be useful for geospatial modelling software where rasters and memory footprint are small enough for the browser context. Our approach has the potential to reduce backend operational complexity, resource requirements, and overall cost.
