Find the ideal location on the Earth for you
Should be as easy as:
make
./idealplace
The program will run and output a 3600x1800 pixel 16-bit greyscale PNG of the Earth, with lighter colors representing areas which match the given preferences.
On OSX, first install Homebrew, then install the two dependencies:
brew install libpng pkg-config
make
./idealplace
All options can be preceded by either a "+" or a "-" and they will all be weighted similarly. To apply different weights to the different criteria, either preceed each argument with "-" for less weight or "+" for more weight, and use more of each character to halve or double the weight.
-tf januarylow januaryhigh julylow julyhigh (all in F)
-tc januarylow januaryhigh julylow julyhigh (all in C)
-wtf januarylow januaryhigh (all in F)
-wtc januarylow januaryhigh (all in C)
-stf julylow julyhigh (all in F)
-stc julylow julyhigh (all in C)
-m [1-12] Evaluate only for a specific month
-mtf low high (low and high temps for that month in F)
-mtc low high (low and high temps for that month in C)
-mr value Average precipitation in mm/month
-ac value Average cloud cover (0=none to 1=total)
-wmph value Average wind speed (mph)
-wmps value Average wind speed (m/s)
-hdi value Human development index (0 to 1)
-mtn value Proximity to and magnitude of terrain (0 to 1)
-ct lat lon Close to a given location (N lat and E lon, use negative for S and W)
-ff lat lon Far from a given location (N lat and E lon, use negative for S and W)
-cl lat lon Climate like a given location (N lat and E lon, use negative for S and W)
-el lat lon Everything like a given location (N lat and E lon, use negative for S and W)
-new Start setting preferences for a second person
-nobdry Do not draw national boundaries on output image
-o name.png Output file name
For example, to select for only annual rainfall and wind, but have rainfall be twice as "important" as wind, use any of these:
./idealplace ++mr 100 +wmph 8
./idealplace +mr 100 -wmph 8
./idealplace -mr 100 --wmph 8
You can use up to 50 "+" or "-", but at that point, just remove all other criteria arguments from the command line, or just look at the source png image for your ideal place.
- Air temperature and precipitation from the ssp245 (most-likely scenario) projection from GloH2O dataset.
- Clouds are a 2021-4 average, data from MERRA-2.
- Elevation from GDEMM2024, further processed to determine per-pixel elevation variance.
- Human Development Index from Mosaiks; I expanded it from -56:74 to -90:90 and filled in the holes.
- Wind speed from GWA3
- Population density from Copernicus.
- National boundary lines from naturalearthdata.org.
- City locations from GeoNames, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
- While I don't use it in the code, I enjoy browsing WeatherSpark.
- Use the open-water data set to make an image of distance-to-water (to allow "more coastal" option)
- And use that to mask off all open water areas (like the Caspian Sea)
- But since it has rivers, can we also have a "near water" in addition to "near ocean"?
- Generate a layer with US state boundaries to aid in locating these places, make that optional
- Support optional "no elevation less than x" or a desired elevation (use log scale?)
- Use population density to allow "in a city but near the country" or "in the country but near a city"
- Find a higher-resolution cloud data set, if possible
- Use GeoNames dataset set a "climate-like" place given a city name (not just lat-lon)
- Can we incorporate hazards like earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, and tornadoes?
I don't get paid for writing or maintaining this, so if you find this tool useful or mention it in your writing, please cite it by using the following BibTeX entry.
@Misc{IdealPlace2024,
author = {Mark J.~Stock},
title = {Ideal{P}lace: {F}ind the ideal location on the {E}arth for you},
howpublished = {\url{https://github.com/markstock/idealplace}},
year = {2024}
}