Free Support
The BRAT is reasonably well documented. See link below for help on understanding on how to use specific features of the BRAT model.
Background Research & Literature
Check out BRAT ResearchGate Project for PublicationsCommunity Support
BRAT Workshops & Courses
We teach BRAT workshops on occasion and those materials are available for reference. There are no specific courses taught publicly on BRAT, but Joe Wheaton does cover BRAT in courses at Utah State University:
- Design Capstone in Management and Restoration of Aquatic Ecosystems (WATS 5340)
- Partnering with Beaver in Restoration Design (WATS 6860)
Issue Forum
We use GitHub Issue tracking as a forum for asking questions and getting help as well as reporting bugs. You can search the forum for past issues without a login, but to post to the forum you will need to create a free Github account. We encourage users to search the forum first if you have questions. If you email us, we will generally reply by pushing the conversation up on to the issue forum so it can benefit other users.
BRAT Datasets
For the projects that we have performed for clients, we provide the BRAT datasets here.
Paid Support
While the pyBRAT scripts are free, open-source and reasonably well documented, it is not perfect, and you get what you pay for. Unlike our more mature models (e.g. GCD) that have full GUIs and ArcGIS Add-Ins, pyBRAT is a series of ArcPy Toolboxes and scripts, that are version sensitive (to both version of ArcGIS and Python), and with rather narrow workflows that have been tailored to how we typically run BRAT in the ETAL lab. If you are someone that has funded the development of BRAT, thank you! If you have sponsored the development of specific features or hired us to carry out specific research, we make sure you get exactly what you need. If you have downloaded the free scripts and are using it to do something, and you find a bug and report it, we try to fix it to the extent we can and with the support fundings we have. The dirty secret about open-source software, very few users take the time to contribute back to the cause by contributing their improvements to the code (though we like the idea), and someone paid for this. If you are interested in seeing new features added to BRAT or having our development team build custom features or apps to meet your needs then pleas get in touch with us.
None of the BRAT development or support happens without someone paying for it (contrary to popular belief, we get no support from our University for supporting this effort and capable students do not work for free). We try to help out users where we can, but our development and support team is in high demand on our paying contracts. If you want to ensure you get the help you need, when you need it, you can hire an USU ETAL analyst to help you with your BRAT analysis, designing monitoring campaigns or helping you with your research.
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