Project aim
Tell a developer within half a second whether a candidate site has a deal-breaking constraint, and how risky it is overall, before any money is spent on detailed studies.
- 15Constraint layers
- 4Project types screened
- <500 msAssessment design target
- PDF + QGISDelivery
Illustrative graphic
Overview
Fatal Flaw is a FastAPI service that screens a proposed Solar, Wind, battery-storage (BESS) or data-centre site against 15 authoritative constraint layers such as wetlands and protected areas. It flags any fatal constraint, computes a weighted risk score across the rest, and produces a PDF report. Analysts can run it directly from QGIS through a dedicated plugin.
The challenge
Early-stage site selection usually means opening many datasets by hand and checking each one against a boundary. That is slow, inconsistent between analysts and easy to get wrong. The platform needed to be fast enough for interactive use, explainable enough for a report, and reachable from the GIS tools analysts already work in.
Data & inputs
Approach
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01
Constraint library
Fifteen authoritative constraint layers, such as wetlands and protected areas, are loaded into PostGIS and indexed for fast intersection.
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02
Fatal-flag detection
Any intersection with a layer marked as fatal for the chosen technology raises a fatal flag immediately.
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03
Weighted risk scoring
The remaining constraints contribute to a weighted risk score for the chosen project type.
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04
Speed
Redis and spatially indexed PostGIS layers support a sub-500 ms design target per assessment.
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05
Reports & QGIS client
Results are delivered as PDF reports and through a QGIS plugin, so screening fits into existing GIS workflows.
Results
Each screening returns a fatal / no-fatal decision, a weighted risk score and a PDF report, from a single API call or from inside QGIS.
Validation
The service is containerised with Docker, and its latency is designed around a sub-500 ms budget per assessment.