What are some suggestions for seeking help with BenMAP (Environmental Benefits Mapping and Analysis Program - Community Edition (BenMAP-CE) | US EPA) ? I see reference to Health and Air Quality Community Forum but it does not look like it has BenMAP content? Also, I did not see any results when I searched BenMAP in this forum itself! I would appreciate any tips! Thanks!
Have you tried submitting something through the ‘Contact Us’ page on the BenMAP website (https://www.epa.gov/benmap/forms/contact-us-about-benmap)? I believe someone should be monitoring those emails and will hopefully be able to point you to technical support.
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As a person who has been using BenMAP for more than 5 years, I can share a few info based on my side.
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Firstly, BenMAP does have tutorial material covering a few domains (including the US, China, and Mexico) which you can grab and get good training (The training material is very clear and points to step-by-step use of BenMAP). However, if you are trying to create BenMAP inputs for your custom domain, I would say it would be challenging as you have to figure out the population dataset and create the shpfile (it does require the shpfile has ROW and COL).
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Secondly, I heard from Neal Fann that the EPA is in the midst of transitioning BenMAP to be a cloud-based tool (You can check back later this year I guess).
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Lastly, while BenMAP is not officially supported here (please correct me if I am wrong), I think there are folks who actively use it in research who are also CMAS Forum community members.
Thus, simply post your question and kindly wait for the response from folks (again, note that it is not supported here, so it generally may take a while to get a response).
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Thanks @foley.kristen and @Ryan for your excellent ideas! I have sent a message on ‘Contact Us’ page of BenMAP’s site, emailed benmap at epa dot gov and I am also going to post questions on a new thread in this forum. Thanks again!