Partners: Corinne Scown, Tyler Huntington, Peter Smith, Andrea Bailey, Meili Gong 

SSEC Engineers: Niki Burggraf, Don Setiawan, Vraj Rajpura

Research Goals and Domain

The BioCircular Valley project aims to develop sustainable products from agricultural waste by creating a publicly accessible interactive map that shows feedstock types and availability as well as estimating downstream fuel performance and environmental impact to facilitate the circular bioeconomy in California’s Northern San Joaquin Valley. This application will help researchers, policymakers, and industry stakeholders assess site suitability to optimize infrastructure placement. It focuses on underutilized organic feedstocks such as almond shells, tomato pomace, winery waste, orchard prunings while integrating agricultural, environmental, and infrastructure datasets to enable informed decision-making.  

Software Problem

Existing solutions like the National BioSiting Tool web application lack the granularity and dynamic resolution capabilities needed for California-specific applications. The availability of high-resolution land and crop data in California creates the need for the ability to process high-resolution spatial data and perform real-time analytics within that context. Additionally, the absence of a scalable backend and flexible API in the existing National tool restricts integration with external systems and impedes user adoption. 

Software Solution

SSEC is working with teams from UC Berkeley, Schmidt Sciences Virtual Institute on Feedstocks of the Future, and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab to build a containerized, cloud-deployed solution stack with a Python (FastAPI, SQLModel, GeoAlchemy) backend and React (MapboxGL) frontend. It features adaptive mesh rendering, spatial analytics (buffering, clustering, intersections), and a RESTful API for data access. The backend uses PostgreSQL with PostGIS extension for spatial data management. Vector tiles are pre-generated using Tippecanoe software and served via the Mapbox Tile Server. The system supports multimodal data export formats including GeoJSON, CSV, and Shapefiles, and supports real-time performance with high scalability.

Impact

The new CA specific platform enables sub-second map interactions and spatial queries; supporting multi-terabyte datasets and parcel-level analysis. It provides a 10x improvement in responsiveness compared to existing tools. By offering a robust API and intuitive web interface, it empowers users such as farmers, biomanufacturers, and researchers to make data-driven decisions. The tool also facilitates integration with partner platforms like BEAM Circular and supports future expansion through it’s modular architecture and open-source licensing.