Budgeting for time and resources

It should be clear from the outset that major spatial planning projects using Zonation cannot be implemented without significant expense, the highest of which are usually the salaries of people for the time they spend on the project. While minor scientific projects can potentially be done quickly in some weeks, substantial real-world applications are likely to take many months or years of cumulative time. Needs are highly case-specific and you must do your own estimation of the need and availability of resources, using the following as a guide.

Human resources: Having access to skilled people is the key to successfully running Zonation projects. Depending on the type of the project, several people with different skill sets may be needed. Someone is needed who will set up Zonation analysis. Simple analyses can be copied from the Zonation tutorial material, but more experience is required when venturing into the use of more advanced features. Participation of someone with experience with Zonation will not hurt. Another significant task is the preparation of the input data layers, including both formatting and validation. Here, experience with GIS, scripting and data manipulation is particularly use, along with sufficient ecological knowledge to be able to spot errors when they occur. Depending on the size and scope of the project, coordination and communication may also be a crucial role. Substantial effort is often required to reach agreement on project goals, to negotiate data agreements, organize project meetings, create web site updates, and to communicate results to stakeholders and the public. Some people could possibly cover more than one of these skill areas needed.

Data: It is important to budget enough time for preparatory data work, as identifying, collecting and pre-processing the required layers of spatial data is usually the most time consuming step in a Zonation planning project. Data needs are generally directly dependant on the aims of the analyses. If the aim of the analysis is to identify key areas for the provision of ecosystem services, you will need spatially explicit data describing the distributions of different ecosystem services. If you wish to also take into account occurrences of rare species or land costs, you will also need to have data describing these. Having defined your data requirements it is well worth investing time to discover if someone has already produced such data, if necessary arranging for its purchase and/or permissions for its use. Having obtained all the necessary data, consideration needs to be given to the most appropriate spatial extent and resolution of the data layers to be used in the actual prioritisation analyses. The final step is processing of data into a standard raster format used in by Zonation. This step is usually relatively systematic and quick. Usually the data selection, processing and evaluation are an iterative process that is linked to all parts of the Zonation process.

Hardware: do you need to buy a big computer? In most cases not (see section 5.3 for more details). In our experience, many data sets can be analysed using readily available, off-the-shelf laptop computers. By contrast, some of the bigger analyses we have seen did require desktop computers with some terabytes of hard drive space and RAM in the order of 300GB. If you need to buy one yourself, these cost in the range of 10-20k Euros (or Dollars), but many institutions have high-performance computers available to employees. While these costs might seem high, any "savings” via use of an inadequate computer could potentially be lost many times over as salaries paid when inefficiencies and delays in data processing cause delays in the project. Try to estimate what your likely requirements are, and then arrange access to a sufficiently capable machine with a little room to spare, i.e., allowing for additional data and other such contingencies. Additionally to hardware, you may need some GIS software for processing the input layers - just use your favourite brand of commercial or free GIS software.

The total cost? Human and hardware resources generally comprise most of the costs when running a Zonation project. Of these, salary costs are likely to be the highest. Time needed varies from a couple of weeks to many person years of effort. We have seen projects completed within a month, but others have continued on and off for a decade. Also, note that data processing and analysis usually requires several iterations as errors are discovered and corrected and analyses rerun. This should be allowed for in the project plan and plan for resources. In addition, although most costs are generated typically by the process of data acquisition and processing, the accumulated time required to run a large stakeholder group can also accumulate quickly. For further discussion see the open-access publication by Lehtomäki and Moilanen (2013), which discusses resources needed in preparation of the model of spatial prioritization, acquisition and preparation of data, analysis with Zonation, interpretation of results, and communication.

It makes a difference whether your project is a once-off study or part of a long-term contribution to operational environmental management. If the analyses are expected to be replicated regularly, extra effort and attention will likely be needed for documentation, safe data storage, knowledge transfer, data updates and possibly in on-the-ground validation and monitoring to verify the effectiveness of conservation management. Such needs will again be case specific.