CONNECTIVITY ANALYSIS TOOLKIT (CAT)
The Connectivity Analysis Toolkit (CAT) combines several new connectivity analysis and linkage mapping methods in an accessible user interface. The CAT software especially facilitates calculation of 'centrality' metrics. Centrality metrics evaluate paths between all possible pairwise combinations of sites on a landscape to rank the contribution of each site to facilitating ecological flows across the network of sites. Computational advances now allow application of centrality metrics to landscapes represented as continuous gradients of habitat quality. This avoids the binary classification of landscapes into patch and matrix required by patch-based analyses of connectivity. It also allows one to avoid the focus on delineating paths between individual pairs of core areas characteristic of most corridor- or linkage-mapping methods of connectivity analysis. However, you can use the CAT for such patch-to-patch linkage mapping as well.
This software is freely available. You may submit your name and email below (optional) if you want to be notified of the release of future versions of the software.
If you plan to install the Toolkit on a 32-bit Microsoft Windows operating system, download this version:
If you plan to install the Toolkit on a 64-bit Microsoft Windows operating system, download this version:
If you prefer to download a zipfile rather than a self-executable installer, the CAT is also available in this format.
CAT for 32-bit Windows:
CAT for 64-bit Windows:
A paper describing the methodology is now published in the journal Conservation Biology (journal website).
To learn about the software without downloading it, see the manual (pdf format).
Or see the online documentation.
VERSION HISTORY
Version 1.0 August 10, 2010
Initial release
Version 1.1 October 14, 2010
Major enhancement: Implementation of time-series min-cost flow.
Several minor bugfixes: e.g., GUI now passes correct alpha value to PageRank.
Version 1.12 October 18, 2010
Bugfix release: Fixed configuration issue between the python libraries py2exe and elementtree that caused python-based functions (betweenness centrality, etc.) to fail with ImportError message.
Version 1.2 October 22, 2011
• Approximate shortest-path betweenness centrality allows faster computation of this metric
• Approximate current flow betweenness centrality allows faster computation of this metric; function also
uses sparse matrices for lower RAM requirements
• Network flow functions updated to LEMON version 1.2.2
• Updates to manual and tutorial dataset
(These are major updates which speed computation in some cases by an order of magnitude.)
Version 1.2.1 April 2, 2012
• Updated python and python packages, including NetworkX to version 1.6.
• Current flow betweenness centrality subset also now uses sparse matrices for lower RAM requirements. (Note that there is no approximate function for current flow betweenness centrality subset, so it is still slow for large datasets).
For support questions, visit the support forum on Google Groups:
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You can also use the form below to contact the developer with questions about the CAT software or to be notified of future updates: