Software and services that support work at the BioPlace scale: the parcel-scale human-land layer where a household or small collective enters into ongoing relationship with a specific piece of ground.
Overview
BioPlace-scale work has particular tooling requirements. The parcels are small enough that industrial farm-management software is overkill. The design work involves layered environmental data (soil, water, climate, contours) that hand-drawing on paper cannot integrate at useful resolution. The practitioners are often solo or small teams without the budget for professional GIS packages. Tools that fit this brief form a specific category, and this page is where the wiki collects them as they emerge.
Currently listed
- Permacultr (permacultr.io). Web-based permaculture site-planning tool that layers open environmental data (contours, soil, climate, water flow) over a site boundary the user draws on a map. Free during public preview.
Criteria for inclusion
A tool earns a page here when it is actively usable at BioPlace scale (a practitioner can adopt it now, not in principle), when it integrates with the open data commons where possible (open-source stacks, open geographic data, interoperable formats), and when its pricing posture is accessible to small operators. Tools that fail one or more of these tests can still be mentioned, with the gap noted on the entry.