From a simple policy question to a scaling question
This app is designed to carry the room through a scientific story. At first, the WUI boundary looks like a straightforward quantity. But the science unfolds when people realize there are two different scale sensitivities hiding inside the problem: one changes the map, and one changes the measurement.
wildland vegetation
definition halo
structures in WUI
measurement boxes
extracted boundary
Synthetic WUI region
A talk-safe sandbox for asking how maps and measurements change with scale
Mapped WUI area
0 km²
Measured boundary length
0 km
Effective dimension
1.00
Structures in WUI
0
Ask the room a deceptively simple question: if you had the map in front of you, shouldn’t the length of the boundary just be a number?
Boundary length vs measurement scale
The coastline-paradox view of a WUI boundary
WUI area vs definition radius
This changes the map itself, not just the measurement
Analysis prompts for the next tool step
What Codex should formalize into a package and docs site
Prompt 1. Build functions that separate vector simplification effects from raster-grain effects.
Prompt 2. Estimate the slope only over the scale range where the log–log relation is approximately linear.
Prompt 3. Compare suburban, exurban, and mountainous regions to see whether they have different effective boundary dimensions.
Prompt 4. Test whether area sensitivity or perimeter sensitivity dominates uncertainty for a given management workflow.